Big Bang Theory: The Elizabeth Whatling Alternative
by Thor2000
Summary: A Penny centric story without the guys. What if Penny had never moved into the apartment across the guys? Where does she live? Where does she go, and will she still meet Leonard and the guys?
1. Chapter 1

The sun was nearing the horizon over Highway 110 between Pasadena and Hollywood. Traffic on the thoroughfare was dense, but it was slowly moving along. Dr. Alan Harper was just barely creeping along through the overused highway while three cars behind him struggling realtor Michael Bluth stuck his head out of his rental car. It didn't have an air conditioner, something of a necessity in these unforgiving Los Angeles summers. A few car lengths behind him, physician Dr. Gregory Brady was sitting in his air conditioned car and talking on his cell phone with his wife as he moved all of twenty feet in ten minutes. As Brady moved up alongside Bluth, he looked left to Bluth in his car then right to the blonde beauty to his right. Retired detective and owner of Munroe Security, Kris Munroe turned up her radio and watched the cars moving ahead and took her turn. The sun was to her right and casting a sun-burning glow over the skyline next to her, but as she rolled up further, she passed Steve Sloan, another local detective she had known in years pass. The struggling traffic was moving as if it were a giant video game; one car departing to make room for ten more as somewhere in the line ten more joined the insanity. Driving her shining new silver Dodge Neon, musical columnist Lily Truscott glanced ahead and pulled into the right lane in front of Charlie, who pounded his steering wheel and called her a word he'd never use in person. Meanwhile, coming up from behind was a red 1980s Cabriolet Volkswagen coming from Pasadena. Changing lanes right in front of Janet Wood-Dawson, the wife of local lawyer Philip Dawson, its blonde driver hurried to get ahead of Lily and squeezed ahead of Sloan trying to break the hold on the traffic.

"Come on! Come on, get out of my way!" She could see her exit in the distance.

"What the hell is she in a hurry for?" Michael was watching her coming up pounding her horn in his rear view mirror.

"Oh-god, not another lady driver…" Harper also talked to himself in his car, but the Cabriolet driver was stuck in traffic and still pounding her horn. It was not making the traffic go faster no matter how hard she hit it.

"Why is she in a hurry?" Lily asked herself.

"How can that little car take that abuse?" Sloan wondered.

"Come on!" The blonde hit her horn hard and tried rolling her window down to scream out of it, but the handle came off in her hand. Putting it back in its hole to continue wheeling her window down, she stuck her head out and screamed at the world for compassion.

"Speed it up!"

Michael Bluth came up beside her in his car with his passenger side window rolling down.

"What the hell is your problem?" He called to her.

"Right now?" The young beauty responded. "It's you!" She looked forward. The cars were rolling forward and she still had to get in front of Charlie to get off the 110 and on to the Hollywood Parkway. Hitting her turn signal only after she started cutting Charlie off, she watched him give him a dirty look as she struggled to get past him, off the freeway and into Los Angeles. A hand checking her cell phone directions, the young woman was hopeful she had reached her last hurdle, but one red light and another slowed her down. Another left and another right, and her chugging little car kept her speeding along making turns not seen since two taxi cabs chased after a black sedan in 1960s Santa Rosita. Right from Pershing Square, left from Sixth Street, she suddenly weaved off the road into the parking lot for Trident Entertainment. Finding a parking spot almost immediately near the front entrance, the driver swung her car into the spot as if she were a race car driver pulling into the pits. Exhaust coming out from the rear, the car's engine chugged a bit even after she shut it off. Grabbing her photo and resume, the driver jumped out Penny Parker, struggling actress, and raced into the building without locking her car, after all, who would steal it? However, her appointment was at four o'clock, and she was almost thirty minutes late. Racing through the former insurance company looking for Room 103, she charged past open offices, employees and even a UPS guy. Passing a corner, she found her destination, and stumbled to a stop right before a tall balding guy in a plaid shirt and blue jeans who looked up at her, to his watch and back again.

"Princess… You've got the worst timing on the planet…" David Bostwick, the assistant casting director of Tombstone Pictures, looked up with a mixture of sad curiosity ad mild annoyance.

"I know I'm late…." Penny was still trying to catch her breath. "But I just got off work an hour ago…." She was still breathing heavily. "And the traffic from Pasadena was horrible…." She tried catching her breath again. "Please, please, please…."

Standing in the waiting room outside his office, Bostwick groaned under his breath, locked his office and groaned under his breath. Maybe it was because Penny looked like his daughter or because he felt sorry for all of these struggling young actresses, but he took her photo and scanned her resume on the back. She was born December 2, 1985 in Omaha, Nebraska and was a graduate of Marcie Harker High School in the suburb of Hastings. Her credits included the horror indie flick "Serial Ape-ist," the direct to video dud "The Crutcherville Horror," a one-night production of "Rent," productions of ''The Diary of Anne Frank" and "A Street Car Named Desire" and a hemorrhoid commercial for "Stay Away." Above the resume, she was looking like a hopeful girl at Christmas, but Bostwick just rolled his eyes sideways.

"I'm really sorry…." He tried letting her down easy. "But you're the wrong type. We're kind of looking more for a short quirky kind of girl with an hourglass figure."

Penny briefly flashed back on her friend Bernadette at work. She was short quirky kind of girl with an hourglass figure.

"Oh, please, there has to be some role open for me?"

"I'm really sorry." Bostwick handed her resume back and moved outside his office. "You can drop off your resume upstairs… Room 310."

"Please?!"

"I have nothing available."

"Please, I've been out here for over five years." Penny was pleading for a big break. "I'm getting nowhere."

"Yeah…" Bostwick looked at her tragic face. "Along with over 50,000 other hopefuls fighting for less than fifty to seventy-five acting roles at any given time. It's a crowded field with not enough roles…. Like a club for recognition with a power mad bouncer at the door." He locked his office. "I'm sorry there aren't enough acting jobs for every struggling starry-eyed would-be actor…." He paused a minute. "…Or former actor trying to stay in the business." He tapped her resume. "Room 310..."

Watching him turn away, Penny felt the tears forming in her eyes and the distraught thoughts entering her mind. Five years… She had been in Pasadena five years trying to become an actress, and this was how far she was. She had come to the Los Angeles with two friends; Brittany Featherstone who quit trying to get married, and Billie Hedison, who got homesick and went back home. In their absence, she lost the apartment and lived with her boyfriend, Kurt Caldwell, but after a year of him cheating and lying about other girls, she moved out ad into a rent-controlled building on Los Robles Avenue across from two geeky scientists. Over time, she had become fond and romantic with Leonard, but his roommate, Sheldon, was likely to be bludgeoned in his sleep someday. Three years later, she was no further than she was now…. A mediocre to lousy waitress for the Cheesecake Factory on Colorado Boulevard. Tears streaming down her face, she braced briefly against the wall and recalled telling her parents she would be coming back a big celebrity, but she couldn't go back home a failure. Her future uncertain, he desires going unfulfilled, she sniffed and rubbed her nose, casting her resume into a waste receptacle in the wall before staggering away in deep depression. She only made it twelve feet back to the entrance before she recalled Room 310, retraced her steps and stuck her hand into the slot in the wall, pulling her photo back out of it.

Standing at the elevator doors, she was about to push the button when the doors opened and two assistants carrying stacks of scripts came strolling out in deep conversation. Her self-worth at zero, her mind wondering if it would hurt to walk off a roof, her finger somehow made its way to press the button for the third floor. When they doors closed, her tear-strewn eyes peered up emotionally distant to the floors of the ascending elevator. A light ringing sound and she again strolled on counting room numbers from 318 with five guys in a meeting laughing and partying past 314 with three assistants talking around a water cooler. Her destination was at the far end, another empty waiting room with orange seats, walls adorned in obscure and forgotten DVD releases like "The Haunting at Chaney Manor" and "Circus of Werewolves" and another unattended receptionist desk. From the adjacent office, she heard a man's voice. Unsure if she should leave her resume and leave, she poked her head into the room.

"Five feet long? Come on, Scott…." He had thinning dark hair and a stocky build, sitting back in his seat with his feet up on the table. Noticing Penny's head, he gestured her to enter while continuing his conversation on his phone. "Catfish don't get that big. Not in Laguna Lake…."

Penny came sauntering in hesitantly unsure what to do.

"Sure, sure, Scott…." Her host was more indebted to his call. "Look, why don't you show me this magic fishing spot next time Meredith and I visit. We'll bring the kids…." He gestured to Penny to sit down. As she sat, she noticed the nameplate on his desk surrounded by "Peanuts" characters. It read "James A. Sarandon – Assistant Casting Director" on a faded gold plate slowly loosening from his wood base.

"Look, I gotta go…" He looked up at Penny. "Meryl Streep is in my office…. No, really!" He laughed and reached out for Penny's resume. "See you in Long Beach!" He hung up his phone and glanced over Penny's acting career. He drew very quiet, too quiet for the despondent young lady before him. His fingers took a mint chocolate from a bowl on his desk, unwrapped it and slipped the chocolate past his lips.

"Omaha, huh…." Sarandon spoke up. "I once shot a Western there… Beautiful town."

"Thank you…." Penny responded wiping her eyes.

"Do horror movies bother you?"

Penny flashed back on doing "Serial Ape-ist." She was topless in a shower with flesh-colored briefs and pretending to wash herself as a guy in a gorilla costume whipped back the curtain, cuing her to scream her most blood-curdling scream.

"Not really…."

"Nudity?"

"As long if it's done tastefully…."

"I'm casting a flick to start shooting this…." Sarandon checked a paper on his cluttered desk with paper and files scattered before a computer. "November…. We're looking for young attractive girls with photogenic appeal. The auditions are next month…"

"Wait a minute, excuse me?" Penny was confused. "The guy downstairs said there wasn't anything."

"David?" Sarandon responded scoffingly over his colleague. "He's in charge of short films. I cover feature films." He explained. "I'll put your resume with the others and pass it along to the production staff. If they like you, they'll call you for an audition…."

"Oh…."

"Much of luck!" Sarandon rose with a hopeful grin to shake Penny's hand. "Now if you'll excuse me… I'm thirty minutes late for dinner with my wife." He paused. "Just kidding, she divorced my ass years ago." He kidded along with her and sat back down to straighten his desk, leaving Penny confused and disoriented. Rising from her seat, she turned out and glided out of the room in a partial daze. Was that it? Was she getting a role? Looking back once from the waiting room, she responded unsure, strolling into the hall trapped between an uncertain future and an ambiguous past.


	2. Chapter 2

2

"I don't agree." The tall lanky one known as Sheldon stepped from Apartment 4-A in his Green Lantern shirt. "If Biff could make it back to 2015, it should logically have been the future where he was wealthy and powerful. Not the future where he was poor and unsuccessful."

"I keep telling you…" Howard was the short one with the dated Beatles haircut and ascot. "Past Biff had not yet made the bets yet in the past. That future hadn't occurred yet."

"False logic…." Sheldon disagreed. "Time is instantaneous as per Doc Brown's conclusion about the bridge suddenly appearing in Part Three. Biff should have arrived in a future altered by his actions in the past."

"Not only that." Leonard rarely agreed with Sheldon, but he was well-versed in trans-dimensional logic. "But Biff would have arrived in a future with an older version of the alternate 1957 history Biff who he had given the sports book to in the past. There would have been two Biffs in the same alternate future!"

"Really? Really?" Howard scoffed. "If that was the case, why didn't original Biff still become rich and powerful?"

"Because Marty altered the past so that future never happened." Sheldon declared.

"Oh come on!" Howard was losing this debate. "Raj, support me on this."

"Are you kidding?" Raj was bringing up the rear from the apartment on their way to the comic book store. "I'm still trying to figure out how Marty's girlfriend and the dog hopped alternate timelines without doing anything."

"It was a rotten plot point by Hollywood writers with no knowledge of how time travel really works." Leonard started down the stairway as Penny appeared coming up to pass him on the way to her apartment. Upon seeing her in her white blouse and blue jeans, his eyes lit up with a nervous reticent infatuation in his eyes. Howard looked up with a smarmy comment ready, but he held on to it as Raj fell characteristically silent.

"Hey, Penny…" Leonard looked up in deep admiration. "How was your audition?"

"Oh, what does it matter anymore…." She dragged her purse across the landing, lifting it up to get her key and unlock her door. Noting her despair, Leonard looked at the guys and back again with concern. A brief excuse to the guys, he sent them on without him and turned back toward his cheese-cake scented girlfriend. He wasn't sure if she wanted to talk, but he felt as if he had to try. Standing in her doorway, he watched as she poured herself a glass of wine and took the container of ice cream from her freezer with a spoon back to her sofa.

"You didn't get it?"

"I got an audition for an audition…." Penny sipped her wine, pushed the button on the remote for her cable and dropped on to her sofa. "And I'm likely not to get that one either." She sipped her wine again. "Do you realize I've gone on over five hundred auditions and this one was the worst one yet." She stuck her spoon into her ice cream.

"They could still call you." Leonard tried cheering her up.

"You don't get it." Penny ate her ice cream and sipped her wine as the cartoon characters set up another Scooby Trap. "Leonard, I'm twenty-five years old. I'm going to be thirty years old in a few more years, and I've got nothing to show for it."

"Well, technically "few" refers to a unit of three or more." He pointed out. "What you mean is "several," a unit of five up to nine but not specifying to…." He noticed the disgusted look of annoyance in her face. "….But that's not important. I mean, look at me. I'm thirty, but I'm still just an experimental physicist. I don't have tenure at Cal Tech, I haven't made any serious…."

"Excuse me!" Penny responded annoyed. "We're talking about me here?"

"Sorry…" Leonard drew quiet.

"I don't know, Leonard…." Penny dug into her ice cream. "Sometimes I wish I had just stayed in Nebraska."

With that comment, Leonard drew quiet. He watched Penny sipping her wine and eating her ice cream watching the cartoons on the television. He understood that she wasn't happy, but it seemed to him that she had forgotten one good thing about her life that might have mattered a bit more to him.

"What about me?" He spoke up again. "Am I a mistake too?"

"What?" Penny took a while to realize her error. "No, Leonard, I didn't mean that. I mean…." She paused to set aside her ice cream and turn back to him, squeezing his hand in hers and forcing a weak but tortured grin to try and hide her depression. "You are so important to me. I don't know where I'd be without you." She kissed his cheek and leaned into him, placing her head on his shoulder to make him seem taller. "And who knows? Maybe if I hadn't moved in here, we might still have met."

"You think so…"

"Of course…." Penny answered, but then she realized one tiny snafu. It was because she had moved into the Los Robles Apartment House and had met Leonard and the guys that had made them first start eating at the Cheesecake Factory. Without that step, they might not have met. Unless Leonard had never met Sheldon, and not become drafted into his restaurant schedule, it was more than likely they would never have met. Without actually traveling into the past and altering the sequence of events as they were originally, there was no way to know where her life might have actually gone. Thinking back, she recalled where she was before she moved to Los Robles. It was Early Fall 2007… The last few months of the George W. Bush administration… The country was in a deep recession, and a very hopeful relief was on its way through the Barack Obama presidency a few months away. At that point, she had been living in Pasadena two years, a year and a half with Billie and Brittany, and half a year with Kurt, but it was his cheating and lying that was splitting them up. It was Kurt cheating on her that made her move out on him. What if he hadn't cheated? What if she hadn't moved out? She wondered where she would have been if those events had gone a separate path. Maybe she would have ended up in another building… Or maybe she might have ended up going back home. The incidents of those days weren't strong in her mind... They were like echoes of distant memories...

"Are you really going to back home?" Bernadette asked her. It was September 12, 2007, and Penny was still a junior waitress at the Cheesecake Factory making $7.25 an hour and showing around a new trainee named Bernadette Rostenkowski. She was a short, cute, curvy blonde with big blue eyes working in the restaurant to pay her way through graduation studies as biochemist. It was a higher yearning she hoped for, and although Penny didn't understand the science, she respected her for it. despite their difference in destinies, she had an hour left on her schedule and with Lisa, Dawn and Tricia available, they had the dining room covered for the dinner rush. Seated in a booth in the spare dining room, they were bundling up rolls of silverware to supply the waitress station. One by one, they took a knife, fork and spoon, trussed them up in cloth napkins and started filling large plastic tubs.

"I can't live with a guy who cheats on me." Penny continued bundling.

"Where you going to go?"

"I guess I'm going to have to look for an apartment somewhere." Penny sighed. "Do you know any good places around here with empty apartments?"

"No, I'm afraid not." The petite biochemist answered. Mentally, she realized she had a spare bed in her one-bedroom apartment, but she was a bit reticent to start sharing it since her sister Heather had moved to Hawaii with her fiance. Trying not to think about it, she realized she was too used to living by herself and became convinced that Penny would likely find a place elsewhere. She just continued bundling, refusing to reveal her extra bed, but for some reason, the secret was welling up within her. She just kept thinking how nice it was to have a clean apartment, not do anyone's dishes and to come and go out without the fear someone was robbing her. Looking up and around the dining room, her conscience started getting to her.

"You know…." She kept bundling. "You can stay with me a few days as you search for a new place. I've got an extra bed."

"Really?" Penny responded.

"Yeah, sure…" Bernadette insisted.

"I won't be any problem?"

"None at all."

"Bernadette…" Penny lit up. "You're so sweet!" She hugged her. "You're just like a little sister."

"Yeah…." Bernadette's conscience stopped festering, but now another more selfish voice in her head was screaming obscenities at her. Her big blue eyes rolled to the side and she started wishing she could go back in time and rescind her hospitable offer, maybe off-set the future and let Penny go off and find her own way. "Crap…." She mumbled under breath.


	3. Chapter 3

3

It was February 22, 2008. Barack Obama was in the White House and most of the country was looking forward to the recovery under the more than capable and less than corrupt Democratic National Party. The Republicans were plotting to block every bill coming out of the Democratic White House, and much of the country was fuming that a good-looking charming African American Harvard graduate was the new President. The revelation was stirring up every White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi from Tallahassee, Florida to Memphis, Tennessee burning the new President in effigy and making up every slanderous story and far-fetched conspiracy theory to force the man from office. Meanwhile, Bernadette wanted Penny out of her apartment. She wasn't even sure if she was still looking for a place of her own, but she was ready for her to go. Living with Penny turned out to be a messy existence with clothes and dishes around the apartment, and nights locked out of the bedroom as Penny spent the night with a new guy every couple nights. She tried to coax Penny along by leaving the newspaper open to the apartment listings or by pausing by apartment buildings on the drive home from work at the Cheesecake Factory to check on rooms, but she wasn't sure if she was getting far with it.

With Spring coming and the change in climate making Southern California hotter than normal, the sidewalk up and down Del Mar Way was starting to get the attention of mobile food carts and vendors selling everything from wicker baskets, old forgotten books and anything else local tenants were trying to get rid of for extra money to pay their triple-digit electrical bills. The Soon family from the fourth floor rolled out a mobile barbecue and was selling hamburgers, hot dogs and barbecue chicken to tourists. The Shapiros from Bernadette's floor were selling homemade flower pins and other items and the Ito family was selling egg rolls and their Native Japanese delicacies to the public. It was a full block representing a wide swath of ethnic families from over the block, and upon seeing the line of cookers, broilers and mobile stoves with tables and canopies. Mr. Schultz was even trying to hawk excess products from his store, and Mrs. Hastings was using the opportunity to sell bric-a-brac from her years of yard and garage sales. Bernadette saw it on her approach to the building and hesitated reluctantly to cross the street upon seeing it.

"Oh, boy…"

"They do this every year?" Penny was in the car with her.

"Every year for two weeks…. And again in the Fall…" Bernadette turned into the parking lot for the Del Mar Apartments and hoped no one was in her spot. She got lucky this time. She noticed many of the same tenants, and a few new ones she was sure had been invited from elsewhere. "It's not too bad. Some of the food is okay if you don't mind heartburn, but the merchandise…." She rolled her eyes and parked her Nissan Altima in its spot next to the Bradley's Dodge Neon with the Garfield figure clinging to the inside back window. Penny was slipping out as she was turning off the car and was soon on her way as she fussed with some of the stuff in the trunk. Looking up, she noticed Penny had stopped at the Cassidy's table, who were letting her sample one of their gyros in the hopes she would buy one. Wondering if she should hasten herself along to guide her from the barrage of entrepreneurs, Bernadette closed her car trunk and continued on her way. By time she reached Penny, the struggling actress had picked up a stack of celebrity magazines and fashion guides for two dollars and was snacking on an egg roll from Mr. Ito.

"You like?" The San Diego-born chef was trying to earn money for a restaurant. "I sell two for three dollars; four for five…"

"I'll have to visit you later." She recognized Mrs. Hasting from the second floor selling the overflow of her lifetime collection. The widow had been left a nice inheritance from her husband, a retired lawyer, but she loved sitting and talking to people visiting the area. Slightly taller than Bernadette in a flower dress and large orange hat, the chubby lady sat in her lawn chair grinning over Penny looking through her collection of objects du art and forgotten trinkets. People were coming from eight blocks away to see the return of the Del Mar Tenants fair. It was possibly illegal, but no one cared. They weren't breaking the law; they were just selling food and possessions for extra cash and the scent of food up and down the two blocks was an odoriferous delight to fans of several cuisines.

"How are you doing, Bernadette?" Frances Hastings looked up; people often thought she looked like actress Kathy Bates. "You got a fellow, yet?"

"Not yet, Mrs. Hastings…"

"Well, that ain't right?" Mrs. Hastings responded in a Western Illinois accent. "A cute girl like you without a fellow… Ought to be boys buzzing around you all the time."

"Mrs. Hastings…" Penny spoke up. "Are you selling all this jewelry?" She asked as a truck came down the hill leaving the brief scent of gasoline in the air.

"Yes, I am…" Mrs. Hastings looked up trying to fan the stink of gas away. "My son gave me most of it…." She turned to Bernadette. "That boy had lousy taste." She noticed as Penny picked through old brooches trying to match earrings and pulled out a long string of miniscule silver balls on a silver thread connected to a blue onyx set inside a faded silver ring of flatten silver engraved with imitation hieroglyphics. "You like that one? I thought it was pretty…." She looked to Bernadette again. "But God knows I'd never wear it. Too gaudy for me, I guess." She looked to Penny again. "I'll sell it for five dollars."

"I like it." Penny was reaching for her purse. "I've got a top it will go with."

"Penny, I'm going on inside." Bernadette then smile to her neighbor. "Have a good day, Mrs. Hastings." She watched as Penny reached to purchase the necklace, but Bernadette pushed onward into her building, stopped to enter her security code and pushing on through after the buzz. It was getting harder and harder to withhold her thoughts. Penny's non-stop shopping in her mind was whittling away at the security deposit she had saved for an apartment. Her purse slung over her shoulder, she entered the elevator and pushed the button for her third floor apartment. It had only been little over five months, but she was ready for Penny to move onward and when she entered the apartment, it just raised her furor even more. There were dirty dishes on her coffee table, clothes on her sofa and dining chairs, a stack of magazines on the floor, and a sink full of dirty dishes, and she had just done the dishes this morning. A disapproving sigh from her lips, she turned to her landline phone, and hit the answering machine.

Beep "Bernadette, it's your mom. Are you still coming for dinner on Friday? I've got a nice boy I want you to meet named…"

She erased that one.

"Congratulations, with only $500 down, you can…."

That was erased too. There was a moment of silence where no one had left a message. She erased it too.

"Penny, this Kurt. We gotta talk….."

Erased.

"Hi, this is Charlie. Looking for Penny…."

Erased.

"Hi, Penny, my name is Todd, I'd like…."

Erased.

"Hi, my name is Howard Wolowitz. I'm looking for Penny. I got your number from…."

Erased.

"Bernadette, this is your dad. Your mom wants to know if you're coming…."

Erased.

"Hi, Penny. This is Brad Corlew at Brookside Apartments. You missed your appointment for an interview. Call me back for a reschedule."

"What?" Bernadette screeched annoyingly. She didn't show up for an interview? Standing over her phone, her pleasant demeanor was quickly turning sour. She couldn't keep living like this with this girl in her apartment. The dirty dishes, the missing groceries, the guys coming and going, the screechy singing in the shower, the junk food wrappers in her sofa…. Sure it was nice to have someone help on the rent and reach the top shelves in the kitchen, but the cost to her civility and self-esteem wasn't worth it. When she heard Penny coming in, her pretty face was marred by thinning lips, eyes as narrow slits and teeth gritted together.

"Oh, my god…" Penny came strolling in and tossed her purse and a bag of items bought from the tenants on to the sofa. She was finishing off one of the Cassidy's gyros. "I spent almost twenty-five dollars on food down there. Best sushi I've ever had. How have I not known about this?"

"Yes, how…" Bernadette responded angry, but Penny didn't notice. The Midwestern native had pulled the top of her Cheesecake uniform off and was crossing the apartment in her bra and skirt for the bedroom. Pretending to sweeten up, she stood at her bedroom door. "Penny, just of curiosity," Bernadette continued. "How is your search for an apartment going?"

"Lousy!" Penny answered from the bathroom. "There is nothing out there!" The water came on as Penny washed up for another date.

"Really?" Bernadette found a recent copy of the local newspaper and turned to the apartment listings. "Well, let's see…." She searched for single person dwellings. "Oh, look, here's one over on South Catalina…."

"Oh, yeah…" Penny's voice echoed forth. "That neighborhood smelled like cabbage."

"Cabbage? Really?" Bernadette leaned back into the doorframe. "How about the one on East Bellevue?"

"Bad neighborhood."

"South Arroyo?"

"No swimming pool."

"Well, we can't live without that!" Bernadette looked again. "Los Robles?"

The water went off as Penny came wandering out and poked into the laundry basket.

"Weirdo on the fourth floor."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Some guy with a scooter and a Beatles haircut." Penny was now in blue jeans and pulling on a loose long sleeved light pink shirt. "Look, I know where you're going with this. When am I moving out? Look, I really am looking..." She stopped by the sofa and looked through the bag of stuff she had purchased from the tenants. The necklace from Mrs. Hastings had slipped to the bottom. "But I've also been working, going on auditions, shopping…."

"Dating…." Bernadette added.

"Exactly!" Penny added. "Look, I'm going to find something. It just takes a while." She pulled her new necklace on over her neck, hooking it behind her neck unseen and draping her hair back around as the pendant hung down from her shoulders. "Johnny's meeting me out front. Don't wait up for me…." She shined a big smile and waved to Bernadette unaware how upset she was. The petite microbiologist was scowling under her glasses and glaring as Penny headed back out of the apartment.

"It would be so easy to make it look like an accident." She mumbled under her breath.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Alone for the evening, Bernadette cleaned up her apartment again and piled Penny's clothes on her bed. She did the dishes and ordered in some Thai Food, having had a craving for it all day. As she was sitting and reading in bed waiting to go to sleep, her mother called and told her about the charming young man she had met and wanted to fix her up with at dinner. His name was Leonard Hofstadter, and he was a scientist of some sort at Cal Tech. She wasn't really partial to dating other scientists, possibly because her own internship was as stagnant as Penny's acting career, but she had promised her mother she'd meet him and let nature find its way. If they were meant to be together, maybe something would happen… like convincing her mother not to fix her up with anyone else. As sleep ascended, she looked at the clock and noticed Penny wasn't back yet. Promptly at 11:30, she laid her glasses on her nightstand and turned to go to sleep.

At 12:45, Penny came stumbling into the building slightly inebriated and half asleep. Johnny had let her off at the curb. The tables, mobile cookers and chairs were all gone by now from the sidewalk as she stumbled in, fussing with the entrance code a few times before she got it right. A deep yawn from her body, Penny wandered forward into the building and into the elevator, glancing closely at the numbers before finding the right one on the Third Floor. Upon pressing it, she was on her way back to the apartment. The partying, drinks and music at the Los Posada Restaurant was still echoing in her head along with a tiny headache wafting in her brain. Another big yawn on the floor, she was drunkenly swaying side by side as if she were a doll in the hands of a five-year-old. Pulling her key from her purse, the tip danced around the entry of the security lock before slipping inside and unlocking the door. Pushing it shut and locking it again on the other side, Penny paused and detected the scent of Midnight Fresh in the moonlit room.

"Oh God, she's been cleaning again."

Stumbling forward, Penny moved across the moonlit apartment for the bedroom. In front of her, she noticed Bernadette asleep in the first bed close to the door and became awkwardly quiet. Her hands pulled her shirt off over her head, dropping it to the floor where she stood. Her feet glided further inside to the far end of the room near the bathroom door. Her head swaying, her legs trembling, she reached her bed, lifted the pile of clothes upon it and dumped them upon the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed and opening her blue jeans, loosening them to push down her long legs to the floor where she pulled them off with their shoes and socks trapped inside. Clad just in a fabric top and her underwear, she wearily stretched herself out on the bed, placing her head on her pillow and stumbling to pull her bed sheets up over her. A deep gasp filled the quiet room as she slowly settled in for the night. She wasn't sure if Bernadette had heard her, but as her eyes tiredly looked over, she realized the tiny blonde hadn't roused from her sleep. Either she was deeply asleep or she was faking it.

Tired and worn out, Penny surrendered herself to the realm of Morpheus, the god of dreams, falling into that world where her mind and desires played games with her senses. There was utter darkness, signs of shadows moving around and the impression she was not alone. Her thoughts wandered and her dreams came to life in vivid realistic detail within her mind. Through the haze of shapes and movement, she had the impression she was traveling; it was not under her control, and she was moving forward toward another place. There was a sound followed by the voices of several hundred people, and her dark world opened up to another reality. A hand reached in and pulled her forward into the light where Penny found herself at the maw of a huge structure. A red carpet stretched out from her into the opening of the structure, and fenced off by the velvet ropes were the throngs of her fans cheering, jumping and calling to get her attention. When she looked down upon herself, she noticed she was clad in a long floor-length silver gown that trailed behind her. She was a star, a celebrity and these people all loved her. This felt right. It felt natural. Feeling compelled to move forward, she reached to touch her fans, have them touch her and push pens and paper to her for her autograph. She loved it. She wanted this. A big smile stretched across her face to live this kind of glamour and glory, but when she reached the darkness of the building, she became afraid. What was waiting for her in there, and why did it scare her? Not wanting to go further, she looked behind her for her fans and found nothing but darkness. It felt like a long dark corridor in a spooky dark house. What was this place? Where was she? Far ahead of her, she saw another person ahead of her, and though she was afraid, she pushed on forward to meet this girl. She was blonde and attractive, clad in a loose purple tank top with pink shorts.

It was herself.

Penny was looking at her reflection in a mirror. Gone was the silver dress, the jewelry and the expensive white shoes. She was looking at her reflection as she really was, an insecure sometimes short-tempered and often untidy girl from a rural town outside Omaha, Nebraska. She was nothing special. She wasn't a star. She was barely even remarkable. There was nothing to set her apart from the thousands of other blonde actresses vying for roles in Hollywood, but as her movements in the reflection mocked her, her reflection came to life, tried reaching out to her and looked down upon her. Her twin seemed to be looking her over with clear delight. She lightly tilted her head to the side, palmed her head to the side then turned and started walking away inside the mirror. Unsure what was happening, Penny backed away from the vision trying to leave and hit the wall behind her. As she felt around, she felt herself enclosed on all sides. The hall behind her had vanished. She was now blocked on both sides and behind, enclosed in her own tiny universe, and that's when she realized what was happening. The girl in the mirror was her, and she had become the girl in the mirror. She started screaming and calling for her to come back. Panicking, screaming, she tried to free herself as her reflection went on to take over her life. Penny started crying out and yelling at Bernadette to wake her up from this nightmare.

Her eyes opening wide, Penny woke and sat up in her bed. Her heart pounding, her breath racing, her eyes looked up to the moonlit windows of the bedroom. A long deep breath came from her as she relaxed, raising her hands up and holding them before her, turning them over and again and then somehow noticing her long blonde hair falling off her shoulders for the first time. She looked at her necklace briefly, grinning covertly and assuredly to herself, but then, Bernadette squirmed in her bed, and she slightly jumped unaware she was there. Looking around as if she were unsure where she was, Penny slipped off her bed, noticing her pants on the floor where she had left them. Checking Bernadette several times, she started pulling them back on, pushing her feet into her shoes once again, tying them, and then quietly ascending to her feet. Slipping out like a shadow, she moved unsure and carefully, glancing around her surroundings with confused intention, noting everything. It was a small one bedroom apartment overlooking the street, one door in the outside living room between herself and freedom. Unlocking the latch, she turned the doorknob and clandestinely pulled herself through it. Once freed, she looked around once again in the corridor and noticed the elevator. In mere minutes, she was soon fleeing the location, taking herself along as a hostage.

Outside the building and on the curb of a long urban roadway stretching several blocks, she smelled the last visages of barbecue, fried chicken and other delicacies in the air. The sky was dark, but the traffic was busy. Looking around the other structures, she tried to see the sky, but the night sky was overcast. The road was unfamiliar to her, her surroundings foreign. On the corner, she noticed a cab parked at the curb, its driver looking over his receipts for the day. Prancing lightly up to the vehicle, Penny pulled the back door open and slid inside, surprising the driver.

"What city is this?" She asked.

"What?" He reacted confused.

"What… city… is… this?" Penny repeated herself quite haughty and demanding with a trace of an English accent to her voice.

"Pasadena." The driver responded. Penny then took a deep breath of relief.

"Thank God, I'm still on the West Coast." She whispered under breath then lifted her head like a British queen, composed herself with regal decorum and looked to this crusty figure of a man with a scraggly beard, bright blue eyes and white hair peeking out from under an old fishing cap. "I wish to go to Altadena." She asked.

"Not a problem…" The driver put his receipts aside and started his engine again. Pulling away from the curb, he turned on to Del Mar Way and turned west along the way. Occasionally looking to his passenger, he watched as Penny earnestly watched and looked over her surroundings. She seemed lost, completely unaware of where she was. She was interested in the cars and impressed by the buildings of Pasadena. When she saw the young adults late at night on the streets, she broke an amused smile and even one time placed her hand to her chest stunned to see the young people holding devices to their heads which they talked to and even got music from. After a few minutes, she turned again to the driver.

"If you don't mind me asking," She once again spoke in a voice of a cultured young woman. "What is today's date?"

"February 22…"

"And the year?"

"2008…"

That was when Penny took a very stunned look of surprise and sat backward into her seat. She reacted very scared and worried, folding her arms before her with the tips of her fingers resting on the base of her neck. Her driver was wondering if was stoned or drunk. Still watching the images whir past her in the cab, she continued studying her surrounding as the cab traveled north on Allen Avenue several blocks, its driver taking a sip from his coffee thermos by his side. It was a twelve to fifteen minute trip for him over three to four miles depending on the final destination, and the traffic was moving smoothly. He yawned tiredly then felt like talking to his pretty young passenger, but when he looked up, she had dozed off with her arms folded before her and her head propped against the window. With that vision, he just turned ahead and kept driving. After around five minutes of stops, traffic and stoplights, he reached East Altadena Drive and turned west, reaching Lake Drive. Knowing he was in the city limits, he reached over his seat and started clapping the back of the passenger side, rousing his customer from his nap as Penny stirred and looked up to him.

"Altadena, ma'am." The driver responded. "Where do you want to be dropped off?"

"What?" Penny gasped and looked around. "Oh, yes… 595 East Loma."

"Yes, ma'am." Her driver knew the area then did a double take. "Wait a second, did you say 595 East Loma?"

"Yes, is there a problem?"

"No, ma'am…." Her driver sounded surprised. "If that's where you want to go." His eyes rounded and rolled to the side. No one drove to the end of East Loma. There was nothing out there, but he kept driving anyway. His pretty passenger started posturing herself, primping herself and tossing her hair back, but as she looked again, she was confused. Something didn't look right.

"Excuse me, what happened to all the mansions? All those big beautiful homes?" She looked at the string of small suburban family homes whirring past the cab.

"Mansions?" Her driver responded confused. "Princess, those were knocked down in the Eighties. It's all residential now."

"What?" Penny looked lost again and drew back into her seat. It was only a mile to the end, but the advance on East Loma was more wooded and less traveled. On the other side heading west were several more small family homes, but at the turn, there was a large brick wall with huge wrought gates. They were padlocked shut. No one had lived on this property in years. Locals knew it had belonged to an old Fifties and Sixties-era actress who had passed away in the Early Eighties. The property now belonged to her estate, which held on to it as a possible future landmark. Upon seeing it, Penny took a deep relieved breath.

"Okay…" Her driver pulled across from the gates and set his car in Park. "That will be $20.25." He looked back at her.

"Oh, yes…" Penny grinned assuredly. "Of course…." She extended the forefinger on her right hand and waved it before her driver, who scowled confusingly for all of a second before tumbling forward into his seat unconscious. With completes darkness and shades of black and dark blue showing the way, Penny opened the cab door, stepped from the back seat and swung the door behind her. Her feet tapping across the desolate asphalt road, she abandoned the cab and its sleeping driver, crossing over to the gate and standing defiant before it. After three seconds, there was a sound of a rusty padlock popping open, the clatter of heavy iron chains chiming to the ground in a neat orderly pile and the gates suddenly parting under their own power with an unearthly creak, granting her access to the property. Stepping through, the gates waited several more minutes before creaking shut behind her once more on their own.

The walk up the drive was over twelve hundred feet and covered a winding driveway over small creeks and past several old street lights taken from a street in Sacramento that had changed from gas lights to electrical in the Sixties. Now rewired for electricity, they would have looked beautiful and unearthly against the surrounding woodlands, but now, they were rusty with peeling paint chips and violated by squirrels and vandals. A few of them had been shattered, some of them bent over at an angle. The tall bushes were growing wild, and the cobblestone driveway was violated and marred by weeds and cracks splitting the pathway. In the distance hidden from view, the signs of a large edifice started coming into view. Pitched roofs, garret windows, and dark windows started coming into view. The driveway came through an archway of an immense estate from the Early 1900s. Crafted from limestone bricks with dark shutters and a black roof, it reared up like a huge mausoleum dirty white in color overlooking a circular driveway and a vine-covered fountain that had not been seen in years. It looked like a haunted house. Penny nostalgically looked over the ruined fountain as the front entrance mystically unlocked itself and swung open to her. Looking up, she lamented over forgotten memories and strolled forward as if it was her house.

The air inside the huge mansion was dead. Desolate and abandoned, the foyer had a ceiling twelve feet high, opening wide to a huge grand staircase under a crystal chandelier covered in dust. Chairs and tables were covered in sheets, resembling fat and misshapen ghosts in the darkness. With the doors closing untouched behind her, Penny hastened to the staircase, her feet carrying her up the dark passage to the second floor. Paintings and fixtures were also covered in sheets, keeping the mansion preserved for another time. Somehow, Penny knew where she was going. Turning right at the top, she passed three bedrooms, pushing her way into the master bedroom at the far end. This room seemed more alive than the rest. The closets were full of dresses, the vanity set up for a forgotten mistress of the deserted mansion. It had a four poster bed with red covers and thick red oak carvings. The table by the door was covered in countless photos in frames covered in dust. Flicking the switch on, a lamp lit up with a dull glow as Penny looked at the dress laid with care across the bed by unknown lost servants. Hoping the water worked as well, she crossed through the French doors into the bathroom and turned on the water in the bathtub. The pipes in the old place sputtered and groaned a few seconds before spitting out old dirty water, but eventually it cleared enough for her to use the shower.

Living in a small cottage on the back of the property, an old woman looked out the window up to the old mansion and noticed the light on in the window of her former mistress. Distressed and upset, she placed a cup of tea down and hurried as best as she could to wake her husband and rouse him from his sleep. It was a small one-bedroom caretaker's hut. It was their job to illicit repairs on the place and deter trespassers and intruders. Stirring her spouse, she woke him up and stood over him in the dark in her long nightgown.

"Janey, what is it? What's wrong?"

"There's someone in the house again."

"What?" George Trout turned over and took his glasses off the table, sitting up in the process to swing his legs over the size of the bed and motioning for his wife to hand him his pants. Seventy-three years old, he was Army retired, a former contractor hired to live on the property and take care of the Brookdale Mansion, the former home of famed 50s actress Elizabeth Whatling. It was his job to keep the house intact until it was ready for historical preservation and to chase off teenagers and trespassers who came here to party, look for ghosts or steal anything they could carry. Pulling on his pants, he looked out first to the mansion from the bedroom window, picked up a ring of keys from the top of his bureau and then motioned back to the side of his bed.

"Did you call the police?"

"Not yet…"

"Give me ten minutes…." He had pulled his shoes on and tied them up, turning afterward to take the hunting rifle down from over the bed and took some shells from the night stand, placing one in the chamber and two more in the pocket of his trousers. "This time, I'm teaching these kids I mean business."

"Don't get shot." Jane stepped out of his way.

"If someone gets shot, it won't be me…." He passed through his living room and paused to unlock the side entrance. "Don't forget to tell the cops to take the back way." He slipped out as his wife watched him traipse through the side patio then up the back stairway to the mansion's pool area. The pool was empty, filled with leaves and debris from the neighbor area, the pool-side lined with old Seventies-era pool furniture. Looking up, he saw the light on in the bathroom of the master bedroom and stood aghast at the sight. That was Mrs. Whatling's old room. Her most cherished belongings were still in there. Hastening his step, he hurried to the parlor doors of the house, quickly unlocking one of the doors and pushing his way inside past chairs covered in sheets and forgotten décor. The stairs were in the adjacent kitchen, taking him up to the top landing where he entered the top hallway and turned left for the main bedroom. Treading lightly, he heard the water running in the house and raised his rifle ready to shoot the first thing that moved. In the room, the lamp by the bed had been turned on, the closet was wide open and the dresses had been parted. His anxiety upon seeing this was wearing heavy on him. His wife had kept this place intact for years, practically museum ready, and now, it was being used by a squatter making themself to home. Carefully approaching the bathroom, he lifted his rifle and carefully glanced inside. His eyes panned the clothes on the pink bathroom rug and then up to the white counter to the pink marble counter. His eyes passed over the silver brush and bottles under the mirror then over to the white towel resting near the edge. Upon seeing the return of Cleopatra's Eye upon it, he froze in his steps. That necklace had been missing for almost thirty years since the house had been burglarized in 1982. Somehow, someway, it had found itself home where it had originated. George suddenly heard the water shut off and the opaque plastic curtain get pulled back, revealing the naked figure in the shower. He stood in stunned surprise of the nude young woman before him.

"Why don't you take a picture?" The girl responded. "It will last longer."


	5. Chapter 5

5

At sixty-five years old, Ben Hedison was a semi-retired lawyer known only for unsuccessfully running for the Los Angeles Assembly in 1986. Tall with silver-speckled dark hair, he rose from bed and went through his morning routine, shaving, showering and pulling out his outfit for a day on the golf course with his law partner and former clients. He was married with three kids in college and very well off in life, his main clients these days were older retirees who hired him to run their accounts. Most of his time these days was spent golfing, getting dragged out on outings with his wife or researching the 1920s for his book about the gangster era. Bounding down for breakfast, he looked up to Trudy, his wife for almost thirty years, sitting at the table sipping her coffee and Margo, their Japanese housekeeper presenting his breakfast, three eggs, sausage and toast with orange juice like he preferred it.

"Good morning, my love…" He kissed his raven-haired wife.

"Good morning, my darling…" She kissed him back and went back to the Sudoku in the newspaper.

"Good morning, Mr. Hedison." Margo was an attractive single mom with two children in school. The Hedisons were her seventh couple to be employed by in over five years. She had a pleasant demeanor and loved children, but her dream was to be a recording artist but not many people liked Asian country music stars. Content to focus on her children, she had been with the Hedisons for two years, helping Mrs. Hedison run the house and take messages for Mr. Hedison. "Mr. Trout called this morning. He said you should call him. Things came up."

"What? Another burglary?" Trudy asked.

"Who knows?" Ben pondered as he buttered his toast then heard his cell phone ring. Looking it over, he noticed it was George again. Looking at his wife and Margo, he took a piece of sausage to eat as he answered the phone. "Hello, George…" He cocked his head back smiling.

"Ben!" George was distressed. "She's back!"

"Who's back, George?" Ben tried eating with one hand.

"Her!"

Ben stopped smiling. "Her?" He asked nervously.

"The bitch is back!" George uttered warningly.

"Holy Mary... Mother of God!" Ben felt a fear he had not lived in over thirty years. Clicking off his phone, he quickly wolfed down his breakfast as fast as he could, dabbing up his egg yolk with his toast before eating it and drinking up his juice.

"Who's back, darling?" his wife asked.

"Her!" Ben mentally cancelled his day of golf and ran out to the foyer of his six bedroom house on Highland Avenue on the west end of Altadena. Mumbling in a panic over and over, all of his nervous anxiety of working for one of his oldest and up till now forgotten clients was coming back. He dropped his keys in the flower bed on the way to his Mercedes and again in the driveway, dropping them again in the floor of the car as he tried to reach the ignition. Finally starting his car, he swerved to miss his own mailbox and reversed haphazardly into the road, just missing a BMW. Shifting into drive, he drove northward toward East Altadena and turning left on his way to Lincoln Avenue, mumbling in a nervous panic along the way. He had to screech to a stop at the traffic light, his leg nervously twitching as he drove, his fingertips dancing in a scared frantic on the dashboard. Once the light changed, he was streaking across the avenue as if he was in NASCAR, tires burning across the thoroughfare to the surprise of other motorists.

Several blocks ahead, he had to hit the brakes to avoid missing Loma Avenue. The back of his car was sliding sideways as he tried not to miss it. The kids on the school bus watching him thought he was a Hollywood stuntman making a movie. Turning right, he was slightly hunched over his steering wheel, trying to watch his speed as he reached the end of the house and reached the woodland on the corner of town that concealed the old Whatling Estate. Built in the 1890s for a forgotten former judge, it had passed down through the years through a few owners, many of whom had made additions to it in the form of additions and a pool house. Now, it was known as the Brookdale, the former home of Hollywood actress Elizabeth Whatling, who had starred in almost 250 films in her life and worked with everyone from Cary Grant, Bette Davis and Abbott and Costello to Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep and Tony Randall. Known in person as highly demanding yet very philanthropic, the secrets of her life and interest in the paranormal were known to a very few. Coming up on the gate, Ben screeched to a stop as a van marked Butch Exterminators came off the property. Watching it drive away, Ben nervously rolled his eyes as he turned back into the gates for the first time in almost thirty years.

His Mercedes bouncing and shaking over the ruins of the cobblestone drive, Ben looked ahead to the house slowly rearing up before him at the end. Mexican laborers were clipping and cutting back the shrubbery, workmen were on the roof peeling off shingles and restoring them, and near the entrance, a van for Regal Plumbing was parked with a crew working on the fountain, pulling out rusted fixtures and pipes and replacing them with their modern equivalents. Parking behind them, Ben found himself shaking uncontrollably as he slipped from his car. Workmen were carrying out carpets to be cleaned. Painters were traipsing in and out of the structure with painting supplies, and as Ben wandered in, he felt like a terrified little boy. Female servants were dusting and vacuuming, the paintings and décor were being dusted off by girls cleaning off the ages of neglect, and the banister was being polished by a handyman. Another person stood on a ladder to clean the chandelier. The scent of fresh paint wafted from the stairway.

"Hey Ben…" George sidled by from the dining room.

"George…" Ben whined under breath. "What's going on?"

"She wants to talk to you."

"No…" Ben felt the dread in the air.

"She's waiting for you."

"How angry is she?"

"She wanted me to dig a hole in the garden big enough for a body." George confessed. "She's been catching up in the dining room on the last thirty years on Janey's laptop." He paused. "She really likes Twitter."

"Great…" Ben turned for the dining room. "That nasty old biddy is never going away…." Slipping around the guys cleaning the chandelier, Ben passed through the parlor next to the entryway and hesitated in the archway of the dining room. Perched at the end of the table near the fireplace, the former Penny Parker sat huddled behind the black Toshiba laptop, searching random subjects on Google, joining Facebook to join the Liz Whatling Appreciation Site, reading the random reviews of current movies and learning just which actors were famous these days.

"Twenty-one Academy awards? Well done, Meryl…." She mumbled next to her breakfast plate and sipped her grape juice. "Damn, this Britney Spears girl is popular…." She looked over the top of her computer like a hawk to her lawyer, now thirty years older, wrinkled and grey-haired, but she recognized him by that dumb look in his face.

"Hi, Lizzie…." Ben grinned ear to ear hoping she couldn't read his fear. "How are you doing?"

Penny scowled at him furiously, her fingers tapping in sequence after each other on the table.

"Remember your heart surgery…." Ben tried to resolve her death. "Funny thing…. You know how I said it was completely routine…. Well," He tried chuckling it off. "It turns out, there was one little problem."

Penny still sat with deep hostility.

"You had a bad reaction to the sedative and went into cardiac arrest." Ben choked on the incident. "They tried keeping you alive, but…. You passed away in your sleep."

Penny's fingers continued tapping in sequence.

"It was not my fault." He suddenly ducked the flying breakfast dish hurled at his head.

"Thirty years!" Penny stood up in a long house dress. "Thirty freaking years in limbo! I've been around for centuries! Aristotle was my damn math teacher, and he was far more competent than you! You're a freaking moron!"

"Look…" Ben backed away from her around the table. "We had everything ready for your return in the event you died, but there was a burglary on the property. All of your jewelry was taken including the Eye of Cleopatra. We did everything to try and get it back, and almost everything was recovered….. Except the Eye."

"Thank God, I was able to latch into this girl's mind…." Penny stopped and stared out the windows of her dining room. She used to have the most beautiful view, but the trees had grown together so close that they now formed a thick leafy canopy from one side to the other. "I don't think I could stand being trapped in the Eye much longer, watching shadows passing over me, trapped between life and death…. But one thing kept me sane…. the thought of getting my revenge on you!"

"Wait… Wait…" Ben motioned around the heavy oak table from her. A chair slid out by itself hoping to tip him, but he dodged it. A suit of armor came to life, twisting his weapon sideways, trapping him in the corner. He lifted the hood on it. It was empty.

"I've got something I need to tell you!" He cleared his throat. "Look…." He looked toward the furious blonde young beauty. "Look, recall you were worth 3.5 million dollars when you died?" He looked up to her angry scowled face. "Your death made you world famous. Because of DVD and merchandise sales in the last thirty years, your estate is up to 21.8 million dollars!"

"You mean…." Penny forced a content little grin. "Like Marilyn?" She had always had a rivalry with that young actress. Beaming a bright satisfying grin, she turned from her lawyer trapped by the suit of armor and added a slight dance to her walk and returned to her seat. Her ego pumped up, she sat at the lap top again and typed her name back into Google on Janey's computer device, and re-read her Wikipedia page. Ben dipped down from the armor trapping him and nervously wiped his face with Kleenex from his pocket.

"So tell me…" Penny leaned back and looked up to him, her accent bouncing on her words. "How much has the world changed since I was gone? Is it mostly the same?"

"Well," Ben tucked the tissue back into his pocket. "We've got a African-American President now…."

"So, racism is gone?"

"No, it's worse than ever." Ben revealed. "White supremacists and Neo-Nazis everywhere have come out from under their rocks screaming for his impeachment, but most Americans love him. The GOP is corrupt now…."

"Well, I can't say I didn't see that coming…" Penny chuckled under breath. "Trickle-Down Economics, my ass!" She gasped a bit. "Look, the most important thing is getting back to work. Who are the top directors now?"

"Well," Ben postured nervously. "There's Ron Howard…."

"That little red-haired boy who ran around the lot?"

"Yeah, but the big problem is…" Ben hesitantly faced reality. "Look, the young lady we had for you in 1982 had no family, no past, no contacts…. The identity you've taken now…. Someone's going to be looking for her."

"I'm not going back into that necklace as you find me an alternate." Penny turned obstinate.

"But Lizzie…."

"Or do you not remember what I can do to you if you cross me?" Penny stood before Ben eye to eye. Deep in within her eyes, he saw a persona that had seen the Trojan War, the fall of Rome, the Renaissance and even two American Wars.

"This is what it is…" She warned him. "And you're going to deal with it! Get me a movie… Or you'll be fodder for the crows!" She marched out in a young beautiful body on two long legs, turning past the restoration crew cleaning her house and heading up the grand staircase to her room to change her clothes. In the dimly lit dining room, Ben felt himself regress back to the spineless and self-deprecating lackey he was back in 1982.

"Who the hell had to find that damn necklace?" He whined.


	6. Chapter 6

6

Some weeks later, Bernadette had her apartment back to where she liked it. It was clean, orderly and she was no longer tripping over magazines near her sofa or forcing back a vomit from something in her sink. She wasn't sure where Penny had gone, but she had neatly packed up her clothes and shoes into two boxes pushed into her coat closet. Although Penny never returned to her job at the Cheesecake Factory, she just rationalized she had gotten fired or quit to take another job. It was not as if Penny liked the job or was a very good waitress. By March 17, it was as if she had never had a roommate at all. The last four weeks had been bliss. Bringing home some take-out from work, she spent the rest of her night reading quietly on her couch up until she was visited by someone at her door. Putting aside her latest Danielle Steele novel, she strolled over to the door, placed her step-stool before it and stepped up on it to peek through the eyehole where she recognized a very angry mother.

"Oh, crap…." She mumbled, stepped down from her step-stool and moved it aside, opening the door sounding as sweetly as possible. "Hi, Mrs. Parker! How's Nebraska?"

"Can the cutesy act, Bernadette!" Raven-haired Susan Parker marched into the apartment looking for Penny. She walked into the bedroom, poked her head into the bathroom and came trailing out angrily concerned. "Where's my daughter?"

"You mean, Penny?"

"Who do you think I mean?"

"She's not in Nebraska?"

"If she was, do you think I'd be here?" Susan confronted Bernadette.

"Well, that's weird." The petite biochemist sounded. "I just naturally assumed she went back home…. Or returned back to Kurt."

"No, I talked to Kurt…" Susan stood with her arms crossed before her. "He hasn't seen her since they broke up, which leaves the question… Where is my daughter, Bernadette?"

"Well, how should I know?" She stood silent, watching Penny's mother narrow her eyes angrily worried and distraught.

"Bernadette…" Susan stepped closer, looming over the cute shapely blonde. "Have you ever watched "Animal Planet?" You know, where the huge angry lioness attacks the stupid cheetah trying to kidnap its child to protect it." She lightly squeezed the young lady's shoulder. "How angry do you want to make this mother?"

"I'm telling the truth!" Bernadette squeaked out with her high-pitched voice. "All I know is she went out one night and didn't come back!"

"She disappeared? And you didn't think to call the police?"

"Well…"

"Well, little lady…." The angry mother turned Bernadette toward the door. "I think it's time we go down to the police department… and report her missing."

"Well, maybe Penny is okay. Maybe she just lost her charger or doesn't have a phone anymore. I mean for all we know…."

"Bernadette…."

"Crap…."

In Altadena, there were news crews at the old Brookdale House from several of the local affiliates. Parked around the circular driveway and blocking the entry way, the reporters belonging to the vans were crowded into the restored parlor. Surrounded by antiques and period furniture under the hanging chandelier, cameras were flashing and reporters were filming local lawyer Ben Hedison and Laura Frost, the recently discovered long-lost grand-daughter of actress Elizabeth Whatling. According to rumor, Liz had had a daughter in 1958 while she was living in England and had successfully kept her secret from the press over several years. The young girl was supposed to inherit Brookdale in 1982 when Liz passed away, but no one could ever find her. The reason she was never found was that she never existed; it was a rumor Liz started herself in 1975 to prepare for her next life in the event of her up-coming death. Pretending to look for her estranged daughter for several years, she was supposed to pass away and then come back to life as the non-existent daughter via the Eye of Cleopatra, but the Eye's absence had delayed her return for several years. No one had any inkling of the actress's immortal status although a few reporters in the Fifties and Sixties had mysteriously disappeared trying to research her. Today, hidden underneath long dark hair and thick rimmed glasses, the girl once known as Penny Parker was moving ahead to take custody of Liz Whatling's estate.

"Miss Frost," Dean Harker from the CBS affiliate spoke up. "Where have you been all these years?"

Penny leaned nervously to the microphone. "Canada." She spoke then leaned back into her seat.

"And Mr. Hedison?" Harv Anderson from NBC pushed around the flashing cameras. "You're absolutely sure that this woman is Mrs. Whatling's grand-daughter… especially after the number of imposters and charlatans in the last few years."

"Look…." Ben spoke to the cacophony and melee of reporters and activity that had taken over the property since he had called the press. "I am completely convinced that Laura is Elizabeth's long lost grand-daughter. I have seen her birth certificate, she has her mother's birth certificate and death certificate plus old photos of Mrs. Whatling, I have researched her claims completely, and I have no doubts that she isn't who she says she is."

"And you have no reserves against allowing an independent third party to double-check those claims."

"None at all."

"May I add Miss Frost…" James Mallory from MSN leaned in to speak. "You look awfully young for a forty-two year old woman."

"Thank you." Penny leaned in briefly again and sat back again.

"Any plans to follow your mother's acting career?"

"We'll see…" Penny leaned in and back out again, allowing Ben to cover most of the questions. His hand slightly shaking as a poured a glass of water, he responded oddly nervous as he sipped his water. By his side, Laura was oddly patient and distant, her head slightly tipped back in a slightly haughty posture, her face elegantly made up to appear more royal. Her lips were ruby red, her brunette tresses of hair brushed back from her face with bright blue eyes looking up from behind slightly tinted plastic framed glasses.

"Mrs. Frost, any chance if getting photos of you without the glasses?" Someone asked.

"I'm sorry." Ben rose looking at his watch. "Can we wrap this up now? Miss Frost has other appointments, but thank you very much for coming… Any more interviews will have to be made through my office. Thank you for coming." He ended the news gathering as Penny rose in her expensive dark blue French dress and high heels and glided from the room heading for the back way to her kitchen. The reporters were still clicking photos of her or trying to squeeze in more questions, but she was already out of view and in a restricted area of the house to guests with Ben holding off the press. Entering the restored and remodeled kitchen, she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a large plastic pitcher of tea from her new stainless steel fridge. Setting it on the island, she reached to take down a glass. Janey stood nearby in the nook garbed in a large white sweater and dark slacks.

"Hello, Janey…"

"I've been meaning to say this, Mrs. Whatling….." The older woman spoke. "But it's so nice to speak to you again. I miss our long talks by the pool when I was your assistant."

"You are still my assistant."

"I can't keep up with that old routine." Jane confessed tiredly as she poured the tea for her young employer. "I imagine you'll be getting a younger girl soon to help you out." She turned to replace the pitcher into the refrigerator.

"I could never replace you."

"Well, that was productive!" Ben came from the front of the house grinning with what he conceived as a success. "I mean… it got a little nervous here and there, but we stuck to the script, and it came off well. I think we've got it all covered."

"Why did you tell them they could review the evidence?" Penny looked up holding her glass close to her bosom. "All we have are few certificates and several photos. They could tell the certificates are false."

"They only need duplicates," The smarmy lawyer looked up with his dark brown eyes. "The hospitals no longer exist to confirm their records, and the people in the photos are unidentified. You know, my predecessor might have been a crook, but he was a clever crook."

"What about DNA?" Janey asked.

"Hopefully, it would never come to that…" Ben looked around feeling content. "I mean… What would they compare it against? We had you cremated. Your ashes scattered on the beach in Catalina….."

"Catalina?" Penny reacted repulsed.

"You spent your summers there."

"I preferred the Mediterranean."

"Okay, so I'll just go to Catalina, sweep you up and mail the dust to Greece with the instructions, "Please scatter on the beach in Crete.""

"Why are you talking to me like that?" Penny narrowed her eyes with an angry fury developing in her face. "You do know what I'll do to you if you make me angry."

"I'm sorry…." Ben switched to his old smarmy self. "I keep forgetting you're in there."

"What about a movie for me?"

"Not yet…." Ben confessed as Penny groaned and turned around screaming under her breath. "But I got you something even better! I got you on "Ellen!"

Penny stood silently confused by that reference.

"I have no idea what that means." She replied.

"Oh-oh-oh!" Janey lit up from the side of the kitchen. "She's big. Everyone loves her!"

Penny was still confused.

"She's like Carson from the Eighties… Only daytime!" Janey clarified.

"Oh…." Penny now followed the reference. "This Ellen can make people famous. Okay…. I know where you're going with this. I think this could work."

"We'll get you into a few Hollywood parties, you meet a few Hollywood producers… Pretty soon, everyone will want Laura Frost in their next movie."

Departing the Brookdale Mansion, reporter Dean Harker took the 134 Highway back to the KCAL News offices in Studio City near Burbank. He was liking this story and was planning it out in his head ready to get it on the news. On his drive, his thoughts turned to his eleven year old daughter's birthday and his son overseas in Iraq with his Marine unit. He was hoping to see him home again in time for his birthday. He was turning fifty-three. Reaching the offices before the KCAL news van, he pulled into his spot near the front entrance, collected his satchel and pulled its strap over his shoulder to head into the building. It was an eight-story building filled with news offices and broadcasting studios for the affiliates. Greeted with the warm hellos of seventeen peers and colleagues from door to elevator to desk, he moved through the bustling room full of his journalistic associates, including three columnists devoted entirely to the TV and movie industry, passing the gossip writer and the crime writer with a brief stop at the coffee pot for a cruller and a cup of black coffee and two sugars. Harker covered many of the major stories out of the local news from the Bluth family antics east of Long Beach to the recent closing of Sacred Heart Hospital in San Defrangelos.

Sipping his coffee, Harker pulled into his desk and carefully set it aside to turn on his computer. A few stories from the wire had been dropped on his desk for him to cover. Something here might be interesting for him to cover, but the lesser ones might be passed to other writers. He was ready to get started on typing the article on Laura Frost when a police report slipped out from the stack and caught his interest. A struggling actress named Penny Parker had vanished last night in Pasadena, and the police were asking for help from the media for assistance. In this day and age, disappearances occurred as often as the holidays, but as Harker saw Penny's picture, he was about to pass on it when something made him pause and look again. He knew that face but from where and how? Pulling out his camera, he took the digital film out and clipped it into his computer.

Scrolling through the photos for a decent image of the young heiress, he stopped and took a black marker from his top drawer. Coloring in Penny's blonde hair on the print-out, he gave her a sloppy mane of brunette hair and added glasses to her face then held it up to the photo on his computer. The young lady he met today had perfect unblemished skin, but the girl the police was looking for had a more tanned look but beyond that…

They looked as if they were the same person.


	7. Chapter 7

7

It was five o'clock, and she was running late. Her Nissan Altima was purring along California Parkway and turning on to Oak Knoll Avenue lined with several restaurants, hotels and shops catering to tourists and visitors. Movie specialty shops and tanning places dotted the way along with a storage place and specialty cafés. She wasn't really fond of her mother fixing her up with strangers, but apparently Monica Rostenkowsky liked this one. She had been shopping for bed linens on East Green Street near the comic book store when she ran into this young man and dropped all of her packages. He was a short good looking figure, and he was so kind and courteous that she just could not avoid asking him to dinner to meet her daughter. Possibly a bit lonely himself, the young man agreed to come to dinner where he felt smitten by the cute blonde intern, the two of them eventually agreeing to meet elsewhere beyond the dinner.

Arriving at the Edmonds on Oak Knoll, Bernadette strolled inside looking for the hostess, but she was either off-duty or elsewhere in the location. It was more of a twenty-floor hotel with a restaurant, but the locals loved the food and atmosphere here as a place to bring dates. Following the hall to the dining room in back beyond the private dining room, she peeked in first, lit up with a shy discreet grin and presented herself in her black dress to her date in the center of the room. Stepping forward in her red pumps, she strolled forward to reunite with her future potential boyfriend.

"Hi Leonard…."

"Bernadette…" The brunette and bespectacled physicist stood trying to figure out if he should hug her or shake her hand, but then she surprised him with a small peck to the cheek and a shy grin. A physicist from Cal-Tech, his name was Dr. Leonard Hofstadter, a twenty-seven year old New Jersey native with extreme social anxiety issues bordering on autism and latent self-esteem plight that made it impossible for him to engage with almost anyone from the fairer sex. However, when he met Bernadette in the family setting, he felt a lightness to his heart and a yearning to send the rest of his life with her. Helping her off with her jacket, he held her seat out for her.

"Sorry I'm late…." She squeaked in a little voice. "But I had to go by the police department for a second interview." Her hand took her water to sip from it.

"Oh, the thing with your roommate?" Leonard recalled her phone call the other night. "How's that going?"

"I don't know." Bernadette hedged around trapped between confused and embarrassed. "All I know is she wandered out one night and got herself hit by a truck or something." Her voice reflected a trace of annoyance. "Her mother probably thinks I killed and buried her in the desert, and the police have searched my place three times." She sipped her water again. "They took every piece of cutlery I had in the kitchen."

"But you didn't…."

"Of course not!" Bernadette responded slightly annoyed. "I even offered to take a lie detector test. I bet you any day now she'll appear in a porn film from or a San Diego stag film!"

"Was she really like that?"

"Seventeen boyfriends in three months since Kurt!" Bernadette looked across the table. "Yes, she was like that!" Sipping her water again, she looked at the menu on the table and went straight for the 300 Calories or less section. She was wanting spaghetti before, but the baked tilapia was looking good. Leonard blinked a few times under his glasses and mentally rehearsed the phrase "My girlfriend, Bernadette" a few times in his mind. Hopefully, there was no force in this planet to keep them apart.

"I have a major bone I wish to pick with you." A tall thin guy in a Spider-Man t-shirt showed up.

"Oh, God!" Leonard reacted with great commiseration and soul-crushing torture. "What are you doing here?"

"If you were trying to make it as practically impossible for me to find out where you and Bernadette were going, you almost succeeded." Their unwanted guest sat down beside Leonard and looked over the table. "I had to hack your computer and drive around the string of restaurants in your Google search to seek you out." He looked across to the cute blonde scientist Leonard was dating. "So this must be Bernadette… I swear your boyfriend here for some reason has being doing everything in the world trying to keep us apart."

"Imagine that…." Leonard whined, looking tortured off into the distance.

"Leonard…" Bernadette sat confused. "Who is this?"

"Speaking from the category of roommates you'd wish would disappear…." Leonard groaned quite tortured and embarrassed. "This is my roommate, Dr. Sheldon Cooper."

"The one you said was nuts?"

"What?" Sheldon postured out of shock. "Nuts? I am not nuts; my mother had me tested!"

"What are you doing here?"

"To help…." Sheldon claimed. "Bernadette," He looked across the table. "I will have you know that Leonard was so nervous about meeting you the other night, but when I offered to help him, he turned down my services. However, seeing as he needs as much help as possible, I came along anyway to help get this relationship and any potential coitus along the way."

Bernadette choked on her water.

Leonard thought he was having a stroke.

"Wait a minute, you don't drive!" He looked up. "How did you really get here?"

"Leonard, I am so sorry…." Two more guys arrived at the table. One was short with blue eyes and brown hair in a Beatles-period bowl cut and an accompanying Sixties-era attire replete with an ascot and large belt buckle. The other was Hindu in appearance with black hair and lost brown eyes. His wardrobe was a sweater vest and shirt with cargo pants and sneakers. "I had no idea we were intruding up your date." He swung over to Leonard's date. "Hi, Howard Wolowitz, I'm one of the small packages that good things come from."

"Yeah…." Bernadette put down her glass. "This isn't working. See you, Leonard." She got up and walked out of dinner thinking about a Filet-O=Fish from McDonalds on the way out. Behind her, she left behind the quartet of confused eccentrics looking around trying to figure what had happened..

"What did you do to screw this up?" Sheldon asked Leonard. Sitting in his seat, Leonard felt his future with the cute microbiologist fading away.

"Why can't you be the one in this group who doesn't talk?"


	8. Chapter 8

8

Her appearance on "Ellen" had been revealing. Ellen Degeneres remarked that Laura Frost seemed to have an old soul, a presence like the old stars of Hollywood who reflected and described vividly the Hollywood of the 1960s. It was then on to "Oprah" where Laura revealed her charities and philanthropic pursuits, but her liberal thoughts offended many of the natives living in the Midwest. She had flirted with Kimmel, entranced O'Brien and confused Ferguson. Scottish in descent, the late night host reminded Frost that many of the places she knew in London just didn't exist anymore or had been gone since the 1980s. However, Laura eloquently covered up her mistakes with fuzzy logic, but she laughed the loudest when he asked if she was possibly a two-thousand year old vampiress from the Roman Empire. Along the publicity junket, she had met Ron Howard, asking about forgotten incidents from his past he was astounded that she knew about. She had appeared at Los Angeles High School, talking about the dangers of drugs and alcohol; she had appeared at the University of California in Berkley preaching of the importance of an education and the University of Nevada in Las Vegas where she spoke to over three thousand Democrats about everything from healthcare, gun control, legalized marijuana and American politics. For a seeming forty year old woman in a twenty-year old body, she had the verbiage, wisdom and tact of a much older woman.

Planning a huge party at the Brookdale to coincide with Spring, the wily heiress was getting a follow-up interview with Dean Harker, one of the reporters from her press conference. It was her third one this week. Janey had made the small sandwiches and hor d'oeuvres along with a teapot full of tea, and the young woman known as Laura Frost went shopping for clothing that was best for a non-sexual outing with a male guest in her home. Spending the morning after breakfast reading in the parlor, she heard the doorbell chimes ring as Janey went to greet her guest and present him to her.

"Dean Harker, ma'am?" The seventy-two year old assistant announced him. Harker was a tall good looking figure with dark hair, blue eyes and steely grin. He looked like the sort of figure who might have once played football. Janey pulled off his jacket from his broad shoulders as the tall reporter looked around the immense house from the parlor to the dining room on the other side. The chandelier never looked more vibrant and the while columns and wainscoting and frieze accentuated the powder blue color on the walls. The furniture was also white with end tables and decorations for color. The fifty-something writer and journalist graced the beautiful brunette in the white dress by shaking her hand on meeting. She then motioned for him to sit by her on the sofa.

"Welcome back to Brookdale, Mr. Harker…" The younger woman sat down beside him.

"Well, thanks for having me back." Harker sat back on the white sofa and pulled out a large black portfolio. Swinging the cover underneath, he took out a pen to take notes. "How are you making yourself to home here?"

"I'm doing very well here." Penny shined with a glow to her eyes and cheeks. "The Trouts have been wonderful. I think of them as if they were my parents."

Janey made a face and rolled her eyes as she left the room.

"Well, this is a nice set-up…." He noticed the food and tea on the large glass table in front of him. "I don't think anyone has set up a lunch like this for a guest since the Sixties."

"I guess I'm an old soul." Penny poured a cup of tea for Mr. Harker and handed it to him. "When I was little, my mother raised me to be very gracious. She had been raised on Old European customs, and she passed on those lessons of decorum on to me."

"Very much like your grandmother, the late Elizabeth Whatling…." Dean sipped the tea. "She was very well known for her Hollywood parties."

Penny mused with an embarrassed smile.

"What did your mother do for a living?"

"I really don't know to be honest." Penny looked away reflectively. "I know she had several jobs….." Her mind was secretly working and rationalizing, choosing her words carefully. "She worked in a restaurant, a tavern, a dressmaker in the theater…."

"Which theater?"

"I was too little. I don't recall those details." Her accent was beautifully eloquent, giving the idea she was related to royalty. "I knew she had married when I was in school. After that, she never worked again."

"What school was that?" Dean sat ready to write it down.

"Now, what was it?" Penny searched back in her mind. "The Wellington, the Walton, Wallingford…. I was only there briefly before I was tossed out for being incorrigible." She continued a recurring habit of not locking in details, of not committing anything to memory and daring to name any place that would be used to question her past. "I just know I wasn't happy there." She reached to try one of Janey's tiny sandwiches.

"Your step-father never had a problem with you?"

"I can't say he was a very good father." Penny responded. "I think he was a coal miner or something like that so he was always short-tempered."

"Near London?"

"No, by that time I was living in the Welsh countryside."

"You were?" Dean sipped his tea as he continued writing. "When did you move to Canada?"

"The Winter of 1982…." Penny claimed while pouring more tea for herself. "I had several chums who had an old lorry they had sold for several hundred pounds to visit Toronto. We had a small band, "The Lords of Westminster.""

"Were you any good?"

"Not really…. We mostly played for ale and chips and lived in an old flat." She looked to Dean writing down everything she described. In his mind, Harker was internally wondering if his suspicion was correct. Her accent was remarkable, her use of British euphemisms was accurate and though she looked like the missing Parker girl, her gestures and posturing were so far removed from anyone he had known from the Midwest.

"How did you meet Mr. Hedison?"

"He somehow tracked me down in Toronto." Penny revealed. "How he did, I don't know. I was living with a guy there…."

"What was his name?"

"Boyd…."

"Boyd what?"

"Boyd something-or-another…. I only knew him as Boyd."

"Where did you live?"

"The back of his van."

"How the hell did you live off the grid for so many years?" Harker asked. "You barely had any schooling, you moved constantly, you had no roots anywhere, no phone, no medical…."

"It seemed very natural to me." Penny beamed with the decorum of a woman had had lived in style and grace her whole life. It just didn't make sense.

"Are you a British or American citizen?"

"British…." Laura commented. "Mr. Hedison is helping me get my citizenship."

"He's a very good lawyer… He should be able to do it…" Harker grinned and looked at the wire about Penny Parker in his folder. He briefly sampled one of the hor d'oeuvres and sipped his tea. "So, what is it like living in this big old spooky house?"

"Spooky?" Penny reacted as if a nerve had been hit. "It's not spooky. If anything, it's quiet and romantic. If anything… I feel as if I'm living in a fairy tale."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend…" Dean continued. "I just know how dangerous it is for a young girl to live by herself. There was just a young lady over a week ago named Penny Parker who suddenly disappeared."

"I think I'm okay." Penny barely responded to the name. "I've got the Trouts living in the house right in back if anything ever happens, and Mr. Hedison had the security system updated. I think I'm okay."

"Have you seen a picture of Penny?" Dean pulled the wire out. "She was a very attractive young girl." As Laura opened the paper and looked at the photo, she saw a face she only knew from the mirror.

"I'm afraid someone has marked up your image, Mr. Harker." Her head lightly looked up with an attitude becoming increasing intimidating.

"Shame…" Dean folded it back up and placed it in his shirt pocket. "Pretty, attractive, twenty-three year old struggling actress disappears… Her mother and roommate are very concerned."

"Mr. Harker…." Penny sat backward in a defensive position on her sofa. "Where exactly are you going with this?"

"In over twenty years, there has been eleven claimants to Liz Whatley's estate." He grinned slightly and sipped his tea again. "And you do look a lot like Mrs. Parker, but on the other hand, I wonder how difficult it would be for a girl from Nebraska to fake a British accent."

"Have you told anyone else of this crazy theory?"

"Of course, several people…."

"No, I don't think you did." Penny spoke up. "If you had, they would have insisted you come with the police, and there would have been an investigation. I'm afraid this interview is over." She rose upset and offended, strolling over to her desk and picking up a pen from off it. She scribbled something down on the pad on the table.

"I'm sorry, did I offend you?" Dean stood with concern and felt a dull numbing pain infest his arm. With it, a sharp pain hit his chest and he felt he was struggling to take a breath. At the desk, Penny had sketched a figure of a man with dark hair and wrote the name "Dean Harker" on it. She drew a heart on its chest then started crossing and marking it out. She made long strikes across the figure's chest as Harker struggled to breath. He felt he was having a heart attack. Clutching his chest, he stumbled forward briefly trying to reach her then fell to his knees and collapsed on to the floor, leaning backward with his eyes fluttering before falling back into the carpet. Turning around to the spectacle, Penny looked down upon his prostrate figure.

"Help… help…. help…." She looked around feigning distress then reached down to him, pulling the wire with her photo from his pocket. Sitting on the floor over him as if she were trying to help him, she suddenly unleashed a loud scream through the mansion. In the kitchen, Janey was preparing a soufflé for dinner and out in the pool area, Ben and George were smoking and talking about landscaping and came running in behind Janey to find Penny as Laura Frost hovering over the body of the dead reporter.

"He had a heart attack." She gasped. "I didn't know what to do."

"Lizzie…" Ben was speechless. He stared with shock at the lifeless form on the floor. "Tell me you didn't do it!"

"I think you might want to get an ambulance for him…" As Laura, Penny was helped up by Janey. "But I don't think they're going to be able to help. Janey…" She looked to her assistant. "Help me up to my bedroom. I'm feeling very overwhelmed."

"Yes, ma'am…"

"Lizzie!" Ben stared into her eyes as she moved distraughtly by him. "Tell me you didn't do it!"

"You'll figure it out…." Penny was helped up the stairs ripping up the paper in her hands. "Oh, and don't be surprised if that squirrelly little roommate in Pasadena has an accident too." She continued up the stairs.

A few minutes later in Studio City, Harker's computer on his desk at KCAL started smoking and sparking with no one near it before bursting into flames. His co-workers rushed to put it out, but it still became consumed by fire and took over his desk with five people trying to fight it. They later claimed it was as if the fire extinguisher was feeding the flames.

In Pasadena, Bernadette was fondly thinking of Leonard as she got ready to go to work. Clad in her uniform, she was on her way out the door when she felt suddenly tired. A drowsy wave of tiredness came over her, and she slightly swooned. For some reason, she was feeling very sleepy. Blinking her eyes sleepily, she dropped her purse and sat upon her sofa. Before she knew it, she was laying her head on the armrest with her legs curled up behind her and sleeping on her sofa. In her kitchen, the microwave started sparking before bursting into flames. The paper towel holder burned up and carried the flames across her cupboards. Eventually, her smoke detector went off and started screaming with non-stop beeping…. before also sparking and bursting into flames in the smoke-filled apartment.


	9. Chapter 9

9

On the fourth floor of the Los Robles Apartment House, Leonard tried getting Bernadette on her phone to apologize and try to get another date without Sheldon knowing. He had tried twice today and three times today, but her phone was not accepting calls from him. It was very much seeming as if she didn't want to see him again.

"Hi Bernadette…" He left a message in her voice mail. "This is Leonard. I'd really like to apologize if you'd let me. Please call me back. This is Leonard." He hung off. Bernadette had been his first real date in weeks. He had seen Leslie Winkle a month ago and Joyce Kim about a year ago, but neither of those dates had romantic themes to them. With Bernadette, he felt free to be himself, and her mother did say they made a cute couple. On the other hand, He was a bit reticent about having a former cop like Mike Rostenkowski as a potential father-in-law.

"Time for the comic book store!" Sheldon came strolling from the bedrooms into the living area wearing his Green Lantern shirt with his carrying pouch swung over his shoulder.

"Yeah," Leonard looked up depressed, holding his cell phone up in front of him as if Bernadette could call any second. "I'm not really interested in going."

"But it's the comic book store!" Sheldon was grinning. "That place always makes you happy!"

"You don't get it, do you?" Leonard responded upset and depressed. "You embarrassed me the other night. The first real date I had in months, and you ruined it!" He paused to gather his thoughts. "For someone who is supposed to be my best friend, you really are sucky at it!"

"I was only trying to help."

"I didn't want your help!" Leonard continued. "I didn't want you there. You took the most important thing to me in years and set fire to it. Do you realize Bernadette may never speak to me ever again, and it's your fault!"

"Are you still driving me to the comic book store?" Sheldon proved to have a one-track mind. With that, Leonard mentally gave in and surrendered to habit even if his conscious mind didn't want to do it. He pulled his keys from his pocket and motioned for the door of the apartment opening it up to see Bernadette standing there distraught and confused. Her hair was mussed, her face was ashen and her waitress uniform was darkened and reeking of smoke. Slightly swaying, she stood as if she had been to the end of hell and back.

"Bernadette," Leonard wrapped his arms around her. "What happened?"

"There was a fire at my place. Everything I owned is gone." She spoke depressed and mentally exhausted. "If the Donahue's son hadn't been visiting, I would have been toast. He had to break my door down."

"Oh my God…" Leonard had guided her over to the sofa to sit by him. "What happened?"

"Leonard, she said there was a fire. Weren't you listening?" Sheldon spoke up.

Leonard and Bernadette looked up to him in disbelief.

"I don't know." Bernadette continued. "I won't know until the fire inspector shows up, but it might be something to do with the wiring." She looked romantically to Leonard. "I lost my clothes, I lost my furniture. I lost my appliances. I lost everything I owned. Leonard…" She looked up to him. "I know this is asking a lot, but…. Could I stay with you till I find a new place? I really could use a shower."

"Well, of course…" Leonard answered as Sheldon went into severe reaction mode behind him.

"Leonard, we have to talk."

"No, we don't…."

"Yes, we do…" Sheldon tugged him away. "Leonard, we cannot have a guest here. We don't do house guests. Quite frankly, if I could afford the rent, I'd ask you to leave."

"Sheldon, she lost her apartment! She needs a place to stay." Leonard faced him down. "And besides… You owe me. You ruined my date with her."

"Oh, I was just waiting for you to throw that up in my face!"

"What's the problem here?" Bernadette stood up slowly becoming aware of the antagonism.

"No problem…" Leonard tried to cover up.

"Sheldon doesn't want me here, does he?"

"Well…."

"Well, tell Sheldon to take a huge flying leap!" She screeched out loud, impressing Leonard and surprising Sheldon. "Oh, my God, you're the weirdo on the fourth floor!"

"What?" Leonard reacted confused. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Penny said she was warned by some guy here with a scooter and a Beatles haircut when she looked for an apartment here." She was remembering the dialogue as if it was a few days ago. "Well, guess what, Sheldon? I'm taking the apartment across the hall, and I'm dating Leonard, and you're just going to have to live with it!" She marched down the hall like a sassy little princess. "And I'm taking a shower in your bathroom too!"

Behind her, Leonard stood surprised but impressed to hear such rage and empowerment out of that little four foot ten package, but Sheldon drew quiet realizing he had just encountered someone who refused to kowtow to him.

"Leonard, I changed my mind." Sheldon mumbled out loud. "if you date that girl, our friendship is over."

"Promise?"


	10. Chapter 10

10

In the April 23 Pasadena Star News of 2008, the obituary read:

"Journalist Dean William Harker, 53, of Glendale passed from a heart attack last April 17 while on assignment. He was a seventeen-year old veteran of KCAL News and married to Marjorie "Markie" Harker, a party planner in the Pasadena area. They had three children, Matthew Harker, 27, a computer specialist analyst in the United States Marine Corp, Demetria Harker, 22, a college student at Pasadena Community College and Nicole Harker, 12, at Willard Elementary High School. He is survived by his parents, William and Marcia Harker, and siblings, Tricia and Chloe Harker."

Out near the swimming pool in her bathing suit, the woman known to the world as Laura Frost had emerged out of the swimming pool in a black bathing suit, drying herself off and gliding over to the table where Janey had laid out her breakfast... Two scrambled eggs with sausage, bacon and toast with orange juice on the side. Making herself comfortable, Penny picked up the newspaper and scanned it over. Ben was coming out to meet her as Janey headed back into the house.

"So sad about that Mr. Harker." Penny spoke in her mystically-induced British accent. "I'll have to send some flowers to his widow with my condolences. I feel as if it was almost my fault. Something in the hors d'euvres, I imagine…."

Ben took out a prescription bottle and took a pill, drinking it down with the water at the table.

"Are you okay?" Penny asked.

"Ulcer…."

"When did that start?"

"February 22…."

Penny looked sternly at him over the newspaper.

"Well," Ben coughed a second then composed himself. "Okay, you have interviews with Paul Feig, Jerry Bruckheimer and Brett Ratner…."

"I'm not doing interviews with any more reporters."

"They're not reporters; they're directors. They make movies…." Ben sat almost hunched over at the table with his notebook. Penny made a happy sound accompanied by light clapping before sipping her juice. "You've also got gatherings scheduled at the Roosevelt, Tennebaum, the Marriott and a fund-raiser for CalTech…"

"A fundraiser?"

"It would be good for your image." Hedison groaned as sat back. "The tabloids keep describing you as a recluse who barely goes out."

"I go out…." Penny insisted. "It's just that all my old friends are either old or dead." She finished her breakfast. "I ran into Clint at Warner Brothers, but all he wanted to talk about was how he missed me and how I used to be back when I was alive. Meryl hasn't returned my calls, Paul, Jimmy, Cyd, Roddy and Alan are gone, and Susan…. She practically snubbed me when I introduced myself." She paused turning reflective. "The only ones in my niche right now are all these young children with whom I have nothing in common. I just feel so alone."

"You have George and Janey…."

"I know… but how much longer are they going to be with me." Penny sighed, pouted like the spoiled diva she was before taking her towel and drying herself a bit more. "I was gone too long this time. I'm going to need new assistants soon."

"Oh God…." Ben started commiserating.

"What?"

"Where are you going to find two people who will be willing to work with you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Penny responded upset.

"Lizzie, you killed a guy!" Ben reacted with subdued shock, but Penny just sat leaning back in her seat, narrowing her eyes in deep retrospect and gazing across the table at her lawyer sipping his water.

"You are not going to find anyone who will live with the number of bodies left in your wake." Ben continued. "Before I met you, Paul said you were given to moods. He said you might have killed over five people, but I'm starting to suspect you might have murdered so many more."

Penny was looking away bored by this conversation.

"I will look into replacements for George and Janey, but you have to start behaving yourself!" He looked at Lizzie as if she were his teenage daughter. He had never known Penny, but as Lizzie he was learning to be afraid of her. "Have you set up any retirement package for them?"

"I'll leave it up to you to create something for them." Penny slightly scowled and looked down to her juice. "I want them taken care of properly. They waited for me for a long time."

"Good…." Ben tried turning the conversation into another direction. "Now, about the fundraiser… Have you thought how much you'd like to donate if you decide to help?"

"Oh, twenty-five thousand might be good….'

"You can do much better than that these days…" Ben started scribbling notes in his notebook. "I'll set aside five hundred thousand aside for your use, and you can decide you how want to donate it. I'll go with you, of course."

"I want an escort."

"You're not getting an escort."

"Why not?"

"Because escort agencies kind of frown upon learning their employees have died under strange circumstances and dumped into lakes and ravines…"

"You're never going to let me forget that…." Penny remarked. "It was one guy!"

Back on Los Robles in Pasadena, CalTech physicist Dr. Sheldon Cooper emerged from Apartment 4-A in his Reverse Flash shirt, Dockers and sneakers and crossed the landing to the other apartment on the floor. At one time in the long ago past, it had been a twenty apartment brownstone with four apartments on each floor, but at some point in the past, the structure had been partially razed and rebuilt to two apartments on each floor. Standing outside the other apartment, he applied his usual rap.

"Leonard and Bernadette…." He knocked. "Leonard and Bernadette…." He knocked. "Leonard and Bernadette…." He heard voices inside the apartment.

"What is that?"

"It's his knock…."

"Are you kidding me?"

"I wish I was." Leonard opened the door of Bernadette's new apartment. It was partially furnished, and she was still filling it with the things she had purchased and the few things rescued from her old apartment. Her picture of her parents had survived as well as most of the things from her closet. She had rescued her family albums, school yearbooks, most of her clothes and some of her shoes, but she had lost her furniture, linens, towels, groceries, laptop and a small library of books and bric-a-brac. Looking up from the kitchen, she watched as Leonard opened the door to his roommate from across the hall.

"Yeah?" Leonard responded on his guard. Bernadette had been instilling a sense of self-esteem and propriety in him that was transforming him into a harder edged person. He was even considering emancipating himself from his mother, and as he looked up to Sheldon, he saw everything that antagonized him in his life.

"I brought you your mail." Sheldon milled in the doorway. "You might want to get your address changed now that you're living with your girlfriend."

"I'm not living with her!" Leonard responded annoyed and looked back to Bernadette. "I'm not yet, am I?"

"No…" Bernadette liked the idea, but she wasn't ready.

"Well, you've sure been spending a lot of time with her over here."

"Sheldon…" Leonard sighed annoyingly. "She lost her apartment. I'm helping her move in!"

"Over three days?" Sheldon acted skeptical. "She must not have lost that much in the fire."

"Excuse me, Leonard…." Bernadette walked over and slammed the door on Sheldon and turned away from it.

"You've got to show me how to do that." Leonard looked at his mail and noticed it was from the Public Relations Department at CalTech. As one of the research scientists for the university, it was his ticket to join the university fundraiser to encourage investors to donate to the science departments there, but the envelope also included his guest ticket should he choose to bring anyone. He'd never had anyone to give it to before, but now that he had it, he knew there was one person he wanted to give it to.

"Bernadette…" He looked up to her with her hair tied up in a ponytail to clean the kitchen. She was clad in a red t-shirt with an open blue long-sleeve hanging loose off her shoulders and blue jeans and second hand sneakers. She looked adorably cute in front of him as he approached her. "How would you like to attend a fundraiser with me for the university?" He asked. "You could meet a lot of scientists that could help move your career along and make contacts that would impress companies you would later work for."

"Really," Bernadette shined as he handed her the ticket. "Leonard, this is so sweet." She kissed him. "That would be incredible." She stood looking at it. "I could meet so many people."

"Do you want to be my guest?"

"I'd love to!" The cute intern looked at the invitation in her hand. "Plus I might get to meet Laura Frost, that heiress everyone has been talking about. Wouldn't that be something?"


	11. Chapter 11

11

Located on the grounds of Pasadena Central Park in the historic section of Pasadena, the Kaufman House was a large mansion in the area that was often used for galas and expensive gatherings. A three story French Mediterranean structure, it had been the home of a forgotten area politician who had left the structure and the property to the city. The Hamilton Hotel was on the grounds, the two structures linked by a promenade and fountain area enjoyed by guests and tourists. Garbed in his best suit and tie, Leonard parked his car in the parking garage of the hotel and proudly walked across the grounds to the mansion with Bernadette wearing a gown from her mother's collection over to the ballroom at the mansion. The walk took them up on to a veranda behind the mansion where several of the investors to CalTech over the years enjoyed a night out to engage in social revelry and free food. Howard and Raj were probably already on the scene to meet them unless President Siebert had tossed them off the grounds.

On his arrival, Leonard introduced Bernadette to Professor Alan Kravitz, the head of the geology department, and Dr. Leon Klaubautermann, the head of medical research, who would be her boss if she continued as a microbiologist. She also met Dr. Eric Gablehauser of the physics department, and Professor Ty Howell, the head of the geology department. He tried introducing her to Professor Anton Crawley of the Entomology Department, but he was mostly distracted by the insect life in a bush on the grounds.

Under the request of President Charles Siebert, most of the physics department was being represented except for Dr. Elliot Wong, who had experienced a little mishap in his high energy radiation research and was in the hospital. Dr. Eric Gablehauser, the head of the department, was present with Professor Gregory Finkleday, the previous head. The investors included Benedict Dennisen, a retired English scientist, who had made a fortune in the stock market, August Hochstetter, a German industrialist well-known in the electronics industry and Victoria Latham, a widow whose husband owned most of the property in and around Mendocino as well as businesses around Southern California. Professor Roy Hinkley was a new investor to the area, best known as an anthropologist and research scientist in his own right. Professor Levi Goldfarb was talking about his research to Janet DuBois, the daughter of the late biochemist Fletcher DuBois.

Doctor Bradley Morelli and Doctor Angela Gustafson from the Primatology Department had showed up as a couple, which wasn't a response to anyone as many knew they were a couple. They strolled past Dr. Herman Randall of the Department of Geology trying to describe his passion to Arnold and Emily Fetterman, a wealthy old couple whose fortune came from his father's rocket research on the early days of NASA. Exhausted early by the gathering, Professor Walter Tupperman had sacked out in a chair and dozed off near Richard Hasselbeck, an investor who had been donating to the Biology Department for over twelve years. Former judge Max Hallstrom was another investor; he had donated to the Chemistry, Neurology and Pharmacology at different times in over seventeen year, but upon entering the mansion's ballroom area, Bernadette was scanning the faces for the young heiress the tabloids had been talking about. She spotted Howard and Raj over by the refreshment table being tended by caterers and waiters and looked over to Miss Dubois meeting Leonard's colleagues, Dr. Daniel Nakamora and Professor Warren Davenport from the physics department. An entomologist herself, she was more interested in meeting Dr. Crawley or Professor Amelia Nussbaum from the Entomology lab.

"Hey, Hofstadter…" Dr. Barry Kripke came up to meet Leonard's new girlfriend and greeted her with his rhotacistic language. "I heard you had a girl in your life. Is this the little lady?"

"Yes…" Leonard introduced them "Barry, this is Bernadette. Bernadette, this is Kripke."

"Hi, Barry…"

"Bernadette…" Barry took her hand a lightly palmed it. "I can't beweeve a girl like you would be dating a guy like this." He looked around the room once and turned back. "Hofstadter, you haven't by any chance seen Dr. Fishbine show up have you?"

"Not really why?" Leonard sighed a bit.

"Weswie Winkle, Fishman, Chen, McNair and I have a bet whether or not he shows up in his bath-wobe." Barry looked around again. "I could win five hundred bucks." He started to leave. "Oh, keep an eye on Tupperman for me. I also have a bet with Professor Wilkinson his heart kicks it tonight." He grinned a nasty opportunistic smile and headed past Dr. Gablehauser for the exterior veranda. As a bus boy passed by, Leonard took glasses of wine down for him and Bernadette.

"Another one of your friends?" Bernadette looked back at Barry.

"Oh no…" Leonard dismissed that idea. "Barry is no one's friend." He continued pointing out his colleagues. "Oh," He gestured with his drink in his hand. "There's Dr. Gunderson from Sweden; he's from the Biology Department. There's Professor Eliot Rothman and Professor Emily Davenport from the physics lab. He's senile… she's divorced."

Bernadette hid a small laugh with her wine glass.

"Professor Willard Laughlin and Professor Ann Shea from Astronomy; that's Raj's department…" He was slightly guiding her over to the table where Howard and Raj were loitering and reverting back to nervous teenagers in a room of their colleagues. Contributor Nate Harwell and his daughter Beth were in attendance and talking with Professor Arthur Guyster also from the astronomy lab. Bernadette was looking around again for the heiress she had heard so much about as she took a deviled egg from the table.

"Miss Frost…" Professor Goldfarb blocked her view of Penny. "What an honor… I was such a fan as a boy of your grand-mother's work. "The Prodigal," "The Purple Mask," "The Wayward Bus" – Wonderful, wonderful movies…."

"Thank you very much…." Penny shined at the praise unnaturally. She had made those movies as Elizabeth Whatling in the Fifties, and they were some of her best defined work before television became popular. Clad in a long black dress that fit with her black hair and blue eyes, she strolled forward as if she was a princess accompanied by her lawyer Ben Hedison in a light gray suit and dark blue tie. Arriving with the interest to donate to the university, she strolled forward glancing around the room and all the faces. It was much like a Hollywood debutante's dinner except the attire was more casual, and she didn't recognize any of the faces. It was a setting she was used to in the past with fashionable designs, old paintings and sculptures in the corners. By her side, one of the physicists from the University hurried up to meet her.

"Mrs. Fwost, awwow me to intwoduce myself… Dr. Bawwy Kwipke." He seemed to introduce himself. "I want to welcome you to our widdle soiway."

"I think he's trying to tell you something." Ben replied.

"Apparently…." Penny was trying to hold back her laughter.

"Barry…" Goldfarb spoke up. "Could you go annoy Dr. Cooper?"

"I don't think Coopa showed up…."

"Then go look for him….." The older professor shooed off his younger colleague for the chance to convince the captivating heiress to help finance his department. "I'm sorry Miss Frost…"

"Excuse me," Penny scowled amusingly. "What kind of accent was that?"

"I think it is called eternal jackass." Goldfarb answered as he briefly stepped aside for Bernadette to see Penny, but then Professor Roger Abbott crossed the room, stopped to estimate the calories in the hors d'euvres he had eaten and paused to record them in his journal. Janine Davis from human resources also stopped to sway the direction of the conversation, and as Bernadette looked up, she missed seeing Penny once again and instead noticed instead a few of the married couples dancing near the fireplace near the end of the room. Looking up to Leonard with her dancing blue eyes, she cajoled him to dance with her just as the room parted again, and she again missed discovering her lost roommate once more.

Over by the refreshment table, Raj Koothrapalli looked around the room and felt insecurely antisocial in this party. He wanted to be a part of it, he wanted to be the life of the party, but all of his old adolescent anxieties from high school were returning. Looking over the table, he noticed the tray of shrimp and ate one then two before realizing he had eaten over seven of them.

"Hey, who told you that you could eat that shrimp?" Mrs. Latham questioned him and made him feel awkward. A second later, she was turning to President Siebert.

"I love making people feel uncomfortable!" She started chuckling under her breath, but Raj was unaware it was a joke, He backed away thinking he was in trouble and trying to figure out what to do, but as he moved, he bumped into someone behind him, and turned around to look into the azure blue eyes of the most beautiful woman in his life.

"Hello," Penny stroked back her long brunette hair. "I'm Laura Frost…" She shined with the most regal smile. "You must be one of the young professors here…." She held out her hand to shake his. "And you are?"

Raj's selective mutism took over, and her incredible beauty rendered him unable to talk. It was an anxiety he had had for years and had interfered with his ability to make social relationships with the opposite sex. All he could do was make a tiny whine, glance nervously at her extended hand now retreating and only gesture for her to wait just a second. Turning around, he hastened over to Howard over in the entrance way to the foyer where he was propositioning Professor Goldfarb's daughter, Sabrina. Approaching him, Raj started poking him in the back in a panic.

"Go away…." Howard tried shooing him off. "Do I bother you when you're talking to a girl?" Raj leaned in and whispered in his ear as Sabrina got bored and left him. He looked up as his jaw dropped with his eyes gazing up upon the most beautiful woman he had seen talking to Mrs. Latham and Professor von Gerlick. It was Laura Frost. She was tall and statuesque like a Greek statue brought to life. Her skin was flawless, her eyes an incredible blue, and her body was incredibly perfect with midnight dark hair cascading down her back like a moonless night brought to life. She was possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

"When they perfect cloning, I'm making ten of her." He mumbled under breath, but Raj was suddenly realizing he had made a bad choice. He had just alerted his best friend the womanizer best known at CalTech for getting called into Human Services for making his female colleagues uncomfortable to the most perfect woman in the room.

"Allow me to introduce myself…." Howard slide into Penny's presence. "Howard Wolowitz…" Raj was poking him and trying to turn him off. "You've met my tongueless friend here?"

Trapped in his silent state, Raj was going into panic mode.

"How did he lose his tongue?" Penny asked with her British accent dancing over her words.

"Oh…" Howard smirked with a tasteless grin. "It was a freak accident with a proton accelerator." That comment further irked Raj trying to break from his muted curse. Glancing around the room, he peered past Leslie Winkle and Kripke, past Doctors Morelli and Gustafson dancing on the other side and noticed Leonard off on the other side of the room dancing with Bernadette. It wasn't really dancing. She was really hanging on him with her head against his chest as Leonard lightly swayed back and forth with her. He crossed across the room in a beleaguered quest to get back the girl he had seen first and approached Leonard in an obsessed hurry, starting by poking Leonard in the shoulder.

"What it is, Raj?" Leonard looked up with his arms around Bernadette. Watching Raj whisper in his ear, she realized she was getting used to this stuff in Leonard's life.

"What's going on?" She asked.

"Howard took a girl away from Raj."

"You've got to be kidding me!"

"I guess I've got to deal with this."

"Do you? Do you really?" Bernadette asked. With a light sigh, she followed Leonard and Raj across the room past Professor Hoskins and Miss DuBois over to the refreshment table to fix the rivalry. Her eyes looking up to the brunette in the dark charcoal dress, she joined Leonard in restraining Howard's libido.

"Howard, did you steal another girl from Raj?" He looked over to the beauty calling herself Laura Frost and felt his heart pumping faster. There was an odd feeling of déjà vu as he looked into her blue eyes. There was a sensation he had known her in another time, another space, but he instead fought to shrug off those feelings. Bernadette was coming up around him with her arm around him.

"Well," Howard was forming a defense. "Well, if he didn't want me stealing her, he had better learn to talk!"

"Penny, is that you?" Stunned, alarmed and in a state of delayed shock, Bernadette recognized her. Even with the dyed hair and expensive clothes, there was no doubt to her that she had found her best friend from the Cheesecake Factory and brief roommate. Before her, Penny paused from sipping her punch and realized she was the roommate from the apartment. Her mind started working, her internal voice began screaming and every acting memory within her communicated by pulling together a believable scenario.

"Excuse me, what did you call me?"

"Penny, where have you been?" Bernadette confronted her. "Your mother, the police and I have been searching for you for weeks… months! We thought you were dead!" She looked upset, distraught… She wasn't sure if she should hug her or hit her.

"Bernadette…" Leonard was just as confused as the other guys. "What are you talking about?"

"This is Penny! My missing roommate!"

"Darling…" Penny took her hands and held them in her own. "I'm sorry, but I don't know have any inkling what you're talking about or who you think I am. My name is Laura Frost… my grandmother was Elizabeth Whatling… the actress?"

"Where did you get that British accent from?" Bernadette asked.

"Boys, boys…" President Siebert had strolled over with Mrs. Latham and Professor Goldfarb. "What's going on? Why is there a meeting near the refreshment table?"

"Mr. Siebert…" Penny looked around amusingly. "I'm afraid the young lady here has confused me for someone else." She gazed over to Ben talking to some of the investors. "She's just a little mistaken."

"Bernadette," Leonard responded confused. "You think Miss Frost is your long-lost roommate?"

"Yes!" The petite blonde insisted. "Her name is Penny Parker, she's twenty-three years old and she comes from Omaha, Nebraska!"

"You know, honey…" Mrs. Latham spoke to Penny. "I get confused with Lucille Bluth from Long Beach all the time, and I don't even see the resemblance!" She sipped her champagne and stayed to watch the confrontation with curious intrigue.

"Okay, then it's just a big case of mistaken identity." Siebert announced.

"Leonard, you believe me, right?" Bernadette turned to her boyfriend. The crowd started dispersing with Mrs. Latham and Penny pulling away from the crowd. Leonard gently tugged Bernadette away to talk in hushed tones, but Howard and Raj were more interested in wooing Penny's… or Laura's heart… whatever her name was. Breaking away from Mrs. Latham, Penny scowled furiously and looked around for her lawyer. Smiling and carousing with one of the young female interns, the married lawyer felt he had been caught by his wife as Penny caught him by the cuff of his neck and dragged him out the doors for a talk, pausing only to fend off Howard and Raj hurried chasing her by thr hormones racing within them..

"Can you boys please give me a moment of privacy?!" She yelled at them as they stopped and hung back. Ben was more confused. Penny had taken him out on to the veranda outside the house with the smokers and stargazers, dragging him down the steps partway to the hotel.

"Lizzie, what's the problem?" He asked under a large oak tree on the property.

"Why isn't that mousy little blonde dead?" Penny was pacing back and forth in anger. "I burned her home to the studs! She shouldn't be running around alive!"

"She survived?"

"Hello?" Penny started pounding on his head. "Anyone in there? Do you realized how much trouble we'll both be in if she goes to the police?" They started arguing back and forth with each other. Penny was livid. Ben was popping pills for his ulcer. In the ballroom of the Kaufman House, Leonard and Bernadette sat close near the refreshment table with each other talking and debating about a different situation.

"Leonard, you believe me, right?" Bernadette asked him.

"Maybe she's got amnesia?"

"That's the only thing that sounds possible." She shifted in her seat on the sofa. "But does amnesia result in an English accent?" She paused thinking it over. "And perfect diction?! When I knew her, she couldn't pronounce "broccoli" correctly and now she's saying "priv-ah-see" instead of "pry-vah-see!"

"I don't know what to tell you, Bernadette." Leonard pulled her close to smell her perfume. "It doesn't make any sense, but there has to be a solution somewhere." He paused to hold her close. "Anything I can do for you?"

"Can you get me something to eat?" She asked. "I haven't eaten anything, and I'm so hungry."

"Sure…" He kissed her cheek and rose to make her a plate wondering if she preferred deviled eggs or shrimp. Sitting on the bench in the window, she looked around the room at the scientist and the investors. They were sharing their theories, talking about experiments and discussing donations. Wondering where Penny had disappeared to this time, she glanced the room over of its mingling guests and socializing adults then felt someone standing near her. Thinking it was Leonard back with her food, she looked up to the presence of lawyer Ben Hedison.

"Miss Rostenkowski?"

"Yes?"

"Miss Frost would like to talk to you in private." He extended his arm to her. Raising herself to her feet, Bernadette looked up to him suspiciously, looked back to Leonard briefly then followed the sixty-five year old lawyer out into the night.


	12. Chapter 12

12

Once he discovered Bernadette missing, Leonard immediately thought she had headed to the bathroom in the Kaufman House, but when she didn't come back after twenty minutes, he asked Howard and Raj if they had seen her, and they went searching for her around the house and grounds. He even tried calling her three times on his cell phone, but just before he was about to call her again, she phoned him and asked him to come to the Brookdale in Altadena. It wasn't exactly a place he was familiar with, and Ben had to give him directions over the phone to reach the estate. It was a fifteen minute drive up Los Robles and Santa Rosa Avenues until he reached Altadena Road, turning left on Porter and then right Loma past many of the residential homes in the area. When he reached the trees, he was to watch carefully for the gates and drive through them. They would be left open for him.

Driving on to the property, Leonard drove on to a fresh road of asphalt lighted by restored oil lamps illuminating the way. Surrounded by trees, he scowled as he tried peering through the darkness and gradually noticed the large shadow looming over head. His car vibrated over the boards of a small bridge just before he drove through a large archway into a vast courtyard. Surrounded by the ivy covered walls of the mansion was a round driveway with a large fountain spraying water twelve feet into the air. Confused and beleaguered, he pulled up close to the entryway behind a large limousine. Another look up at the spooky white structure reaching into the night from inside his car, he swung his car door open and stepped out on to the hard roadway. His confusion mounting with concern, his hand reached to his pocket, pulling out his inhaler. A quick squirt past his lips, he exhaled into the cold night air and stepped over to the front entrance with his feet clicking across the cobblestone driveway. The huge stone and brick structure was threateningly imposing. Standing before the huge white doors, he reached up and clapped the brass knockers once then twice. He then stood there for several seconds as the sounds of footsteps echoed within and came closer. Leonard looked back at his car once and tugged at his tie as the door creaked and slowly creaked open.

"Let me guess…" George Trout looked up with a wrinkled face, thin white hair and two bold blue eyes enhanced by his gold framed glasses. "You must be Leonard."

"Yeah," Leonard reacted confused. "I'm looking for…."

"Yes, she's here." George widened the door. "Come on in…." He stepped aside as Leonard strolled inside and looked up to the large opulent interior. The old man firmly pushed the door shut then shoved the locks into place. All around the dimly lit foyer were portraits of women in different attire from separate time periods. High above the staircase was another full length painting of a tall beautiful woman in regal dress. Leonard looked briefly into the dining room then turned back to George.

"You might want to follow me…" George replied. "They're in the parlor."

"Who are?"

"You'll see." He strolled forward to several columns separating the foyer from the parlor. The parlor itself was dimly lit except for a roaring fire in the fireplace, casting long shadows in the room. He glanced from the table to the sitting area where a bottle of wine rested on the table with a platter of pastries. Beyond that was a desk turned to the room and a large globe between two tables under the windows. It might have looked grand in the night, but now it looked as if it was set up for a séance. From a chair by the table, Bernadette looked up to Leonard and rushed to be held by him.

"Miss Whatling…" George spoke up. "If there won't be anything else tonight, I'd like to take off."

"Of course, George…." A voice responded. "You have a good night."

"Mrs. Whatling?" Leonard responded confused as George departed the room. "Bernadette, what's going on?" He whispered.

"Leonard…" Bernadette voiced dismissively. "You're not going to believe it." She looked away scared for her life. "I-I-I don't think I do…"

"Dr. Hofstadter…." Penny beamed with a grin and stepped forward in a silver-toned house dress from the far end of the room. "I believe what I'm going to announce is going to be mutually advantageous to us all." She shined a big knowing grin to him.

"I don't understand." Leonard looked up. "I thought your name was Frost."

"It's not…" Bernadette whispered.

"Oh, yes…" Penny guided them to sit down. "I can see where that's very confusing… You see, it was once Whatling… That was my old life. Now it's Frost. Laura Frost."

The young physicist sat perplexed with Bernadette clinging to him by his side on the sofa. He just kept scowling in his perplexed state and wondering what was happening.

"What?"

"She's Penny…" Bernadette looked over with the fire reflected in her eyes. "Or she used to be..." She looked back to her former roommate.

Leonard looked from her over to the beautiful brunette heiress.

"Yes, I believe that takes a bit of explaining. You see, Dr. Hofstadter, I have had several lives going back several years…. Several centuries, as a matter of fact…" Penny spoke with an English accent, reaching beneath her collar and held up the end of her necklace. The last time Bernadette had seen it was at Mrs. Hastings' curb-side yard sale. "Let me introduce the Eye of Cleopatra…." She showed off her necklace. The silver amulet lit up in the room with the light from the fire illuminating the gem in it.

"That's not its real name, of course." Penny grinned. "Whatever it was really called has been lost to history, but when it was presented to Cleopatra the Seventh in the First Millennium, she called it the Eye. According to legend, King Priam of Troy gave it to Helen as a wedding present almost two century prior…

"Unfortunately, when the Romans started pillaging Alexandria in the First Century, Cleopatra gave it with her jewelry to a faithful servant to flee for Greece ahead of the Romans. When the servant eventually died, she discovered the Eye allowed her to come back in the form of the next wearer of the necklace again and again, and with the help of loyal accomplices, she got to become royals, aristocrats and queens, and in recent years… actresses and socialites. It also bestowed her… other gifts along the way you might call sorcery."

"Is this some kind of a joke?" Leonard asked. Bernadette sat silently overwhelmed and terrified.

"Dr. Hofstadter," Penny leaned back elegantly in her seat by the fireplace. "I will give you one million dollars for your research, but with it, you and Miss Rostenkowski will live on my estate and oversee my interests. You will see that my home is taken care of, my privacy is vehemently protected and you will make sure my security is defended with your lives. With it, I will grant you vast luxury and resources, and all you have to do is pledge your complete loyalty to me. What more could you possibly ask?" She lit up with a smile spreading across her face.

"Leonard, I couldn't make this decision without you…." Bernadette spoke up. "That's why I asked her to bring you here."

"This whole story is preposterous." Leonard looked from her to Penny. "There's no such thing as magic."

"There are more things in heaven and Earth than can be realized in your philosophy." Penny turned a contract on the table to Leonard and offered him a pen. "I gave Shakespeare that line." She grinned menacingly to him.

"And what if we refuse?" Leonard asked.

"Well, then…." Penny leaned back into her seat and crossed her fingers over each other in her lap. "You can just go. Go from here and pretend we've never met…"

"Leonard, we need to talk…." Bernadette spoke up.

"What?"

"It sounds like a great deal. Let's talk about it."

"You can't be serious?"

"Excellent…" Penny stood up from her chair. "I'll let you lovebirds discuss things out. There are some crab puffs in the kitchen I should be getting. I'll just let you two discuss things while I'm gone." She stood and passed from the parlor to the dining room for the kitchen with her house dress reflecting the light from the fireplace. Leonard looked to Bernadette stunned and surprised.

"Bernadette, you can't be…"

"Don't you get it, Leonard?" The petite blonde waitress spoke up. "There's a reason she's willing to let us go. If she's as powerful as she says, she can kill us any time she wants. A car accident, a fatal crash…. A fire in the apartment…." She looked at him with clear acuity. "She has us right where she wants us. We either say yes… Or we die in an accident on the way home, and she goes on living into eternity."

"How… How do we get out of this?"

"I don't know." Bernadette thought. "She seems to have great pride in that necklace. Maybe if we…"

"I think they're slightly charred…." Penny came strolling back carrying a platter of overcooked crab puffs. "But they taste wonderful." She set the delicacy down in front of the young couple. "So, what have we decided?"

"I think…" Leonard looked to Bernadette. "We're going to sign…" He took the pen and looked over the contract with Penny hovering him as leaned down over the table. As she leaned over, the Eye of Cleopatra hung down from her neck over the table. Leonard was reading the first page then turning to the second, but Bernadette was rising to her feet. Hoping Leonard was stalling as much as he could, she kept looking at the necklace then quickly reached and tried grabbing it. When Penny realized what she was doing, her eyes turned furious, the two women fighting for the necklace. Penny placed her hand on the smaller girl's throat and lifted her off her feet, hurling her across the room.

"I should have known." Penny raged as Leonard raced over to collect his girlfriend. "I should have killed you when I had the chance!" Her eyes flared as the two raced for the entrance, but one sway of her arm caused the table in the foyer to fly across the room and block the entry way. When Leonard started turning, he felt the poltergeist energy lift him off his feet and fling him into the stairway, his body tumbling sideways down the steps. Bernadette wanted to race to him, but she felt invisible fingers on her throat, tightening and squeezing on her neck, cutting off her air. She couldn't breathe. Several feet away, Penny was mystically lifting her off the floor as if she were performing a Jedi feat from Leonard's favorite movie.

"Bernadette…" Leonard rousted every moment from his youth of being terrorized by bullies and tried mustering his inner hero. Watching his girlfriend choking and pleading for air, he rose to his feat and attacked Penny by knocking her over to the floor. By his side, Bernadette crashed back to the floor. He tried grabbing the necklace from her throat, the two of them scuffling on the parquet floor, but Penny kneed him in the groin and dropped him like a sack of potatoes.

"High school… all over again…" He whined.

Before Penny could turn back around to Bernadette, the diminutive waitress had jumped on her back and was clawing at the necklace. Staggering around on her feet with the blonde on her back, Penny screamed at her, her arm gesturing to the suit of armor on the stairs which suddenly twitched to life and brandished its sword. Bernadette's eyes widened as it started coming to defend its mistress. Her fingers were clenched over the necklace, but it wouldn't come over Penny's head.

"Penny!" Bernadette was screaming. "If you're in there, please help us!" She felt fingers in her hair, pulling her hair out by the roots. Forced to let go of the necklace, she tumbled to the floor on to her back. The armor was reeling its sword on Leonard ready to cleave him in half. Feeling as if he was in a bad horror movie, the spectacled physicist was scooting back across the floor on his back.

"You can forget about Penny Parker!" Penny stood menacingly over Bernadette who had been screaming herself out of breath. "She's gone, and she's never coming back!" Leonard accidentally knocked her over trying to avoid the armor, and the former blonde tumbled to the floor in a heap. Seeing her chance, the petite waitress lifted herself up and ripped the necklace from Penny's neck, scrambling over to the fireplace.

"No!" Penny started racing to stop her, but Bernadette had reached the fireplace first and threw the necklace into it. Penny threw her out of the way on arrival and took the fire place poker to try and rescue it. The animated armor had suddenly lost its power and collapsed in the foyer before Leonard. He looked up as Bernadette limped over to lift him up from the floor. Penny was screaming as she tried rescuing the Eye from the flames. She had it once, but it came loose and fell back into the fire. As Leonard was racing from the house, he heard the night itself screaming. He felt drowsy and tired; Bernadette had to lift him to reach his car, but the sky darkened as Leonard felt reality quake around him. The sky and all of creation was splitting, and with it, he was seeing forgotten memories of another world... another reality. When he opened his eyes again, he was laying in bed in his apartment on Los Robles, and Penny was by him in bed with long blonde hair and screaming her head off.

"No! No!" She was screaming and crying.

"Penny?" Leonard watched as she rolled over out of bed and on to the floor of his bedroom. Crying and confused, she was crawling around on the floor looking for something. When she crawled into the living room, he hopped out of bed to run to help her. She was distraught and confused, trying to escape the apartment, but she was clawing at her head, attempting to pull her own hair out by the roots.

"Penny, Penny!" Leonard came racing in his underwear and without his glasses. "What is it? What is it?!"

"She's still in my head, Leonard!" Penny screamed. "She's still in my head!"

"Who, Penny? Who?!"

"Her!" Penny was crying hysterically. "She still in my… What?" She gasped with a brief moment of lucidity, her eyes full of tears. "Leonard…." She paused blinking her eyes. "Do you know me?"

"Of course, I know you…" Leonard held her. "We've been married for almost a year."

"We have…." Her head trembling, Penny looked around the apartment and realized she was on the floor of his old apartment on Los Robles. An entire life seemed to be rushing back to her senses… the day she met Sheldon and Leonard, their first date together, their first kiss and their first fight… She recalled Bernadette and Howard getting together, the "Shamy" coming together and after several marriage proposals, her and Leonard getting married together in Las Vegas. The timeline had been restored; their romance coming back together to her memories….

"Leonard, I'm back." She turned to tears of joy. "I'm back… I'm back…." She pulled him close on the floor and started hissing him deeply, squeezing him close to her heart.


	13. Chapter 13

13

It was May 21, 2016. Leonard and Penny had been married for over eight months or seven depending on which marriage ceremony they wanted to honor. President Barack Obama's second term as President was in its last months, and most of the country was rooting for a Hillary Clinton presidency. Unfortunately, another part of the country who had hated having an African-American President in the White House was cheering for a Manhattan real estate millionaire with questionable ethics and very little morality. Penny's circle of friends usually didn't care about politics, but they were aware of the current events going on in the country. Over the years, there had been a few changes in their lives. Penny was now a medical health rep for Bernadette's company, and the petite beauty was now a working microbiologist. Bernadette had also met and married Howard while Raj had started dating Dr. Emily Sweeney, a cute red-headed dermatologist. Even Sheldon had found someone that tolerated him. Her name was Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, a mousy and eccentric neuro-biologist with her own social peculiarities, who much as everyone else felt the brunt of his ego, suffered the pangs of his narcissism and struggled under the thunderstorm of his fascist demands and tried to stay devoted to him. Intrigued by his mind at first, she had gradually learned to love him and choose him to be her partner in life.

"Sheldon, it's a movie! Get over it!" She screamed.

"How can I?" Sheldon lamented. "If Doc Brown can send Marty McFly over a bridge that only exists in the future and through a movie screen that doesn't exist in the past, he should have been able to rationalize he could procure a can of gas in 1897 he could have delivered after reaching the future!"

"How would he have been able to miss the train that demolished the Delorean in 1985?" Howard pointed out. "They couldn't have flown over it. The storm in 1955 burnt out the flight circuits!"

"If they had avoided Bufford Tannen entirely, they would have missed hitting the train in 1985." Sheldon pointed out. "They then could have gotten a tank of gas to take back to 1895, hid it in the blacksmith shed in a place they could find it to get them back to 1985 and avoid Bufford Tannen entirely as well as that god-awful sub-plot with Mary Steenburgen, a horrible thread in an otherwise impeccable movie."

"Wait a minute…" Bernadette looked up from her Thai food. "Are you insulting actress Mary Steenburgen?"

"All I know I've been watching this movie for over an hour and I haven't heard a single word of it." Emily spoke up annoyed with Sheldon and Howard talking through it. She was sitting next to Raj on the floor and eating Thai food with the others in yet another night time ritual of food, movies and conversation. Next to her, Sheldon, Emily, Howard and Raj had filled up the sofa while Leonard and Penny occupied the other side of the room near the kitchen. Ignoring the movie reality tirade between Howard and Sheldon, the blonde sales rep heard her phone buzzing in her pocket and took it out. The caller identification read "Darkest Night." At first, she was going to delete it, but then curiosity got the best of her, and she answered it.

"Hello?"

"Penny Parker?" A female voice asked.

"Yes…"

"Hi, this is Zoe Burns for James Sarandon's office." She worked for Darkest Night Productions.

"Who?"

"You auditioned for a movie with us six years ago." Zoe was sitting in Sarandon's old office and looking at Penny's six year old acting resume. "I know it's been a long time, but we're finally moving forward with the film we started on back then. Unfortunately, we had some bankruptcy issues back then we had to settle first…. But we're now moving ahead, and Mr. Sarandon and the directors would like to meet you. Could I book you for a meeting next week?"

"What?" Penny was taken aback by the call. "Are you kidding me?"

"How is Thursday at two o'clock?"

"Perfect! I can be there!"

"Awesome!" Zoe was writing down the appointment. "I'll send you a reminder the night before, and I'll see you there."

"Yes, thank you!" Penny sat stunned and surprised. She hadn't been on an audition in two years, and one just fell into her lap. She wasn't sure how to handle it. She just stood in her seat staring down at her phone.

"Penny, what is it?" Leonard asked.

"I just got a call-back on an audition I did six years ago." She responded astounded and even bewildered. Back then, acting was the most important thing in her life, but now, she was married, she had a great job and her life was much more stable than it once was. She should have been dancing and screaming, but now, it just didn't matter to her as much.

"That's awesome!" Emily spoke up ahead of other well wishes from her other friends, but the responses were not all courteous. After the barrage of positive thoughts, Sheldon waited for the good will to end and offer a different opposite perspective.

"Why are you all congratulating her? She's got a job as a sales rep." He pointed out. "She's not going to take it. That would be like Albert Einstein leaving physics to be a really bad waitress… or in this case, his ignorant Nebraska cousin leaving his job at the Jiffy Lube to take a job picking up dead animals off the interstate."

Everyone started grousing at his insulting comparison.

"Sheldon…." Even Amy groaned in pain at that ugly rhetoric.

"I didn't say I was getting it, you East Texas knob!" Penny shot back. "It's just an interview. I doubt I'd actually get it anyway."

"But what if you did…." Leonard was still eating his Thai food. "Would you leave being a sales rep to do a movie?"

"I don't know…." Penny twisted up the noodles in her chow mein. "I mean… My life is great right now, but…. I still want to be an actress."

"What if the role is playing an evil rich actress who possesses a much younger blonde actress?" Emily made an oblique reference to Penny's dream. Everyone drew quiet as Penny's embarrassed eyes rounded in shock.

"Leonard!" He was only one of two people who knew about it.

"I didn't tell anyone!" Her husband turned on his defense. "I swear!"

"Really?" She started swatting him. "Then who did?"

"I told you that was supposed to be a secret!" Bernadette looked to Howard.

"I told you not to tell anyone." Howard looked to Raj.

"I ran out things to talk about with Emily after sex…" Raj confessed. By his side, Emily was trying to hide a grin of dismay. She sucked up a noodle from her meal and looked up embarrassed and sorry.

"Wait a second…" Amy looked up. "Why wasn't I told about this dream?" Sheldon was looking around as if it was new to him too.

"It was nothing!" Penny exclaimed.

"Oh, please!" Bernadette was still laughing about it. "You dreamed an entire alternate life where you were possessed by an actress named Elizabeth Whatling, became rich and famous and I was dating Leonard! You even had me moving into your apartment with him!"

"You didn't tell me that part." Leonard looked to Penny who was now holding her head down supported by her left hand. He looked over to Bernadette and thought about it, but Howard shot him a jealous look.

"Penny, why didn't you tell me about your dream?" Amy asked. "Aren't we friends too?"

"Well, if she didn't tell me, why would she tell you?" Sheldon replied.

"Hey," Penny composed herself. "It was a very detailed, extensive dream, and it really pulled me apart mentally and psychologically. I really felt like I was there…" She paused briefly. "Even when I wasn't and trying to kill Leonard and Bernadette."

"What?" Bernadette looked up shocked. "You didn't tell me that part!"

"It was a dream!"

"Did Leonard and Bernadette have sex?" Emily asked having fun with this chaos she had created.

"No!" Leonard and Bernadette looked at each other and screamed in union though it wasn't sure if it was to defend themselves or distract from their spouses.

"You know what's weird…." Raj was looking up names on the Internet on his phone. "Maybe it wasn't a dream, and Penny did somehow live an alternate timeline like Mary McFly in "Back to the Future 2." I looked up Elizabeth Whatling, and she was real. She was a big actress in the 50s, 60s and 70s, made over two hundred movies, and she died in 1982 due to complications in a surgery... Just like Penny's dream!"

"Raj, that doesn't mean anything." Amy spoke up. "She possibly just heard the name in passing and used it in her dream."

"Oh, really?" Raj looked up again. "Her lawyer, Ben Hedison… He's real too, and he's still alive. He has a law form in Altadena to this very day!"

"Perfectly, explainable…." Sheldon scoffed. "Coincidence…"

"Raj…" Penny and Leonard looked awkwardly spooked at each other. "What about Dean Harker?" Penny asked. "He was a reporter."

"Dean Harker?" Raj searched the name on Google. "You won't believe this! Also real. He's now an assistant editor for the Altadena Star News!" He looked up as if he had found proof Penny had actually lived an alternate life in another reality.

"That is so spooky." Emily leaned in to read his phone.

"What is this? The Twilight Zone?" Sheldon scoffed. "Three names do not prove a theory!"

"Wait a second…" Penny leaned forward. "Bernadette… Did you have a lady in your building named Hastings who looked like Kathy Bates and had curbside yard sales in the spring and the fall?"

"Yeah…" Bernadette was shocked to be reminded of her. "She moved out of the building three months before you introduced me to Howard!" Upon hearing that, Penny went into shock, leaning back in her seat and covering her face with her hands to hide the fact of how scared she was.

"Oh my God…" It was Howard's turned to be shocked. "Leonard really did get it on with my wife in an alternate time-line."

"Shut up!" Penny and Bernadette screamed at him.

"Wait a second… Wait a second…." Leonard was trying to follow the alternate timeline speculating that was going on. "Are we saying that if Penny had moved in with Bernadette back in 2008 she would have found a cursed amulet that is still possibly floating around in our timeline waiting to be discovered?"

"Or maybe…" Emily spoke up. "Someone else has already found it…."

Out on Los Robles, an almost familiar cab driver with a scraggly beard, bright blue eyes and white hair peeking out from under an old fishing cap sat checking his receipts. He had seventy-two rides and almost two thousand dollars on him and was worried he was close to getting held up. Looking up briefly, he saw a glimpse of white and a figure slipped into his back seat. Fifty-nine years old and very much alive, Dean Harker slipped into the cab. His dark hair was turning silver and was almost snow white on top.

"Ross Field, please." He asked.

"What was that?"

"Ross Field…" Harker repeated. "I have to catch a flight to Napa."

"Oh, Napa, eh…" The driver switched on his flag and pulled out. "Wine country..."

"Yep…" Harker shined with a tilt of his head. His mother lived near a vineyard there and her birthday was coming up. His wife and kids were possibly already there. He would have taken the train, but the plane was quicker and faster, but as he settled into his seat, he already pictured the city in his mind. Situated east of Sonoma where the 121 Highway merged with the 29 Highway on the Napa River, He had last been there three months prior to interview heiress Jill Kendall raising money for the local St. Jude Hospital Charity, something very close to his heart. He had not seen her for a while, but he had kept up with her since then. She had had some ups and downs, been divorced and dependent on drugs, but she was healing and getting better. Keeping busy with her charities, she was in her home in Napa, carrying another box down from her spare bedroom to sell old clothes for money to give to charity.

"Okay, guys, that's it." Jill dropped another box on to the table of her living room. "Get it all out of here." She picked up an earlier bottle of water and sipped it.

"Jill, this is sweet and wonderful. This will help a lot of people." Marjorie Perugian from the local recreation center had arrived with Christy Plunkett, a friend from her support group. Blonde, slight of build and pretty, Plunkett had been drafted to help move boxes, but she was also poking through the clothes and rejects for items that fit her expensive tastes.

"At least, I get it out of here." Jill responded. "It's mostly the crap I've got left over from when I was married."

"Jill, do you mean to get rid of this?" Christy found a necklace with a flattened silver disc with a blue onyx and scripted with odd hieroglyphics. She hoisted it up to the light and admired it.

"Oh, that ugly thing?" Jill cringed upon seeing it again. "An old beau gave that to me as a gift, but I never wore it. You can have it if you want."

"You think it's ugly?" Christy acted ambivalent. "I think it's got character."

"Christy, can you get your character in gear and help get the boxes out?" She turned round. "Thanks again, Jill."

"You're welcome." Jill held the door open and closed it behind them. There were a few steps through the front yard of Jill's estate to Christy's car out front. Stumbling around with the door to the back seat, Christy pushed her box through to the other side then hastened around the car with her new necklace, pausing to try it on and lower to see her reflection in the side view mirror. On the other side, Marjorie loaded her boxes and caught her breath. Slamming the door shut, she opened the front passenger side door and slipped into the car. Next to her, Christy sat taking a deep breath then lowering her head tiredly, her hands extending her fingers and crossing her arms over her chest.

"Christy, are you okay?" Marjorie asked.

"Just fine…." Christy spoke with an emerging English accent dancing over her words. "If you don't mind, I'll just drop you off. There's a certain lawyer in Altadena who's waiting for me… And he's been waiting a very long time." She beamed an enigmatic smile accompanied by a wild look to her blue eyes.

END


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